A box of chocolates

Sometimes you're the bug, sometimes you're the windshield.

My dad is having both a colostomy and hernia repair surgery on Monday, my mom is officially flipping her wig with worry that he won't live through the procedure. I have agreed to spend the MLK holiday holding her hand while she waits for the procedure to be over. I don't have the easy relationship with my mom that I hope to have with my girls.

Claire has strep, now recovered enough to sass back at every opportunity, and to not have earned my automatic sympathetic mommy response based on illness. And better enough to steal another chapstick from her dad, and ruin one, again.

My neck, fused twelve years ago after a car accident, doesn't like change. My neck is generally OK, but responds badly to increasing the standard level of exercise, decreasing the standard level of exercise, or holding a twenty pound person more than normal, say, when they are either sleepless or sick, or both.

Every night this week except the last, one child or the other robbed us of a couple of the hours of sleep we had hoped for.

However, on the other side of the box of chocolates, we have these things:

Claire is better, having been on antibiotics for more than 24 hours, and so far, Hannah has not shown signs of getting strep, which would likely mean a hospital admission as I doubt she would eat enough if her throat hurt that badly. I should not speak too soon lest I anger the Gods and bring down their wrath, but I am hopeful that I will be vindicated as a breastfeeding lactivist who believes the breast milk helped stave off the dreaded strep.

Hannah is a wee bundle of iron infused energy, expect when she is all wiped out because I can't seem to stick to her schedule on weekends.

I really enjoyed spending extra one on one time with Claire while she was sick. She wasn't too sick to enjoy herself, and she blooms with extra attention. Mostly I loved being able to hold her close and nuzzle her wee red head, and fondle her soft sweet skin, and squeeze her tiny legs, and all of those mommy based feelings that make no sense to anyone else but delight the mommy way down in the core of her soul. Yum!

So don't think it is all a vale of tears at Chez Ginger. It's just that classic mix of good and bad, hard and easy, bitter and sweet that makes up the life we have.