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Morning Interrupted
Today’s title, “Morning Interrupted,” was far more prophetic than I ever intended it to be. Not only was my early morning (i.e., pre 6:30 a.m.) routine left in shambles but my mid-morning schedule has been disrupted as well.
Powerful Spark (From Print Shop 2.0 Deluxe)
Mark was out of town last night, so of course a round of thunderstorms chose to rumble in around 4:00 a.m. Kayla is very afraid of thunderstorms, so she came padding into our bedroom around 4, and I let her go ahead and crawl up into the bed on Mark’s side. Those negotiations taking a little time, Mandy and Darwin viewed them as a sign that it was time to get up, so they started jumping on and off the bed in great excitement. You really haven’t lived until all four paws of a 55 or 60 pound dog hit you squarely on the chest at 4:00 a.m. in the morning!
I threw them outside into the thunderstorm to do whatever they felt they needed to. (Tyra knew better than to wake up. Besides, she is not going into a thunderstorm unless she is thrown out into it, so she got to stay inside and asleep at the foot of the bed.)
Once they came back in, around 4:10 or so, my only hope of getting any more rest before 5:30 was to separate Darwin and Mandy, so I put Darwin up in his carrier (he usually sleeps there or in the den at night – he only got to sleep in the bedroom last night because Mark wasn’t home and our routine was disrupted anyhow) and kept Mandy in the bedroom with me. Mandy settled back down, but Darwin felt it was his sworn duty to bark with his loud “intruder alert” bark every time a strong thunder clap sounded over the house. This practice guaranteed that even if Kayla could get to sleep, she was going to wake back up once he started to bark, which further ensured that I wasn’t getting back to sleep either.
After about 45 minutes of that, Kayla got up and ran into the bathroom and started to be sick. I got her settled back down and we finally got maybe an extra half-hour before we had to get up. After we got up, I took her temperature, and she was in that no-man’s land between 98.6 and 100 (at 99.3), so I gave her a choice on whether to go to school or not.
She elected to go because the school is doing the Stanford Achievement Tests and she was going to try to finish the test (this is the second, and last, day of testing). I let her off at school at 7:15 with a wish and a prayer, and toodled my way to work, where I hoped to have an uneventful, but fruitful, day.
Alas, as you probably suspect, that was not to be! About 9:45 the school called and said that she had left the test, with the principal at her side, saying that she was too sick to keep taking it. I asked the nurse about her temperature, and she was still in that no-man’s land, although a little higher at 99.7, and hadn’t gotten sick again. Even though I wasn’t sure that she was any worse than she had been when I dropped her off, I left work and traveled back to our home town to pick her up. It was a good thing I did; as soon as we got home, she was sick again, and then when I took her temperature, it was up around 101.6! Fortunately, our doctor can see her at 2, and right now she is asleep on the couch, in which state I hope she stays for a couple hours, since sleep is the best thing for her.
I would like to go to sleep, too, but as every mother knows, your child will never get sick on a day when you are fairly caught up, so I have a project I get to work on for a while here at the house. However, as I have said before, I am very grateful to the people I work with for their understanding about family and priorities and I am grateful that I can work on a project at the house to keep caught up.
All of which is a long way of saying nothing this morning, so far, has gone according to plan, but maybe the new improved plan will have better luck!
- A Splash of Color
Even though a sick child is something every parent can sympathize with, I hate to end my blog on such a damp note, so instead I am finishing this entry off with a few pictures of some of the flowers around Key West that Mark and I enjoyed seeing. This is a very small sample compared with what is avaible to see down there, but I hope it brightens your day.
Picture of a house taken from the Conch Train
Tubebuia Tree, Key West
Bougainvillea
Tabebuia Tree Flowers, Key West
Have a great day everyone!
Nancy
Tales from the Mom-Side 