This is the song that never ends, it just goes on and on my friends...

Dawn asked what is going on up here, and I'll tell you: it's called catching pneumonia and having your immune system trashed forever and ever afterwards, amen. Seriously, on Sunday night I finished my ten days of antibiotics from strep throat and by Monday night I was puking from a stomach bug. Literally, the day after the meds I was sick again! Chad had it too, but the difference was that his was gone in 24 hours. Mine morphed into a chest cold that had me home from work for a couple of days and I'm still coughing today. I'll bet my boss it totally thinking he made the right decision about hiring me now. Seriously, spring cannot come soon enough! Enough with the germs already!

Anyway, that explains another week in my life with very little accomplished, but I am starting to feel a lot better now. I even picked up my camera on Thursday and Friday. That's always a good sign.Mallory came home from daycare with this awesome milk jug bird feeder, and she dragged Chad out into the back yard to get it hung up, pronto. But after pointing out where it belonged, she didn't even stick around to watch it find its new home.I caught this next one with a looooong exposure in her room at night, after I went to check on her and found her all snuggled up with three teddy bears at once. Cute, cute. It looks kind of green on here though - I thought I had the colour better than that in Photoshop? Hmmm.Liam's class won a pajamas-and-a-movie day on Friday. When you send your kid to school in pajamas, it's OK to send them with bedhead too, right?
Just another silly one of Liam. He is totally cracking me up these days. He has suddenly turned into such a b.o.y. Burps and farts are the funniest things in the world and he walks around the house trying to make noises with his armpit (though so far, failing miserably.) He is always just the happiest kid who can entertain himself with little games no matter where he is. Love him to death.
Mallory's class celebrated St. Patrick's day a little early, so we put together this head-to-toe green outfit for her. Seriously, if I had hair the colour of hers, I would wear head to toe green every single day. STUNNING.And here she is back home from school with her leprechaun hat. Very fitting for a mischievous little girl.

And with that - it's March Break! Bring it on. Lots of fun to come.

Rerun

Sick... AGAIN. Fully expecting to be let go one of these days for failure to perform. Trying like heck to stay away from kiddos so they don't catch it, too, right before March Break.

On the plus side, I've slept more these past 3 days than I have in months. And posting here on an iPod while lying in bed is actually kind of fun.

Back when healthy.

On track

Today, I was supposed to run 13.1 miles at the Chilly Half Marathon. That obviously didn't happen. Instead, I ran 8 miles yesterday morning on the treadmill. (Usually I hate running on the treadmill, but the gale force winds outside convinced me it was the right thing to do. And OK, I admit it: I also rented "Breaking Dawn: Part 1" and watched that while running to keep me going!) As a result, I was pretty much useless the rest of the weekend - I was just too tired to start any projects. The good news, though, is that I did it, and I have a little less than two months to work up another 5 miles so I can do 13.1 at the London Half Marathon. I am back in the saddle.

In other news, check out Liam and the shape drawing he made. I am told that his giraffe involving 19 triangles and 10 diamonds is legendary in the Grade 1 classroom. A budding genius, right??

Who says the oldest gets to do everything first?

On the weekend, Liam decided to put his 1,097-piece Lego pirate ship together again, meaning that aside from coming upstairs for hockey and to pee and have something to eat, he spent pretty much the whole weekend in the basement. Chad was down there with him watching golf, so that meant that we girls had the run of the main floor. And so we decided to make some cookies. Actually, I decided that we should *have* some cookies, and then I put Mallory in charge of making them. This included measuring out most ingredients and - the piece de resistance - I taught her how to use the mixer. She thought she was pretty hot stuff, switching it on and off and raising and lowering the paddle so that she could add ingredients.Liam came up at one point, when he heard the mixer whirring (knowing that that usually signals good things to come). Mallory showed off to him a little bit. It's not often that Little Sister gets to learn something new before Big Brother has already had a go at it.She took her job seriously. It took her quite some time to pick out which apron she would wear for the adventure.The downside of this for me is that I had to let her lick the beater. Usually that's my job. It's one that I take very seriously and my favourite part of the whole process. I would rather eat a whole bowl of raw dough than bake it into cookies, and no, I have never had food poisoning (...knock on wood).In the end, we did wind up baking (most of) the dough into cookies, and we did share those with the boys when they were done. This time, it was chocolate chip. Next up: a batch of spring-themed sugar cookies, to go with the change of season.

Recuperating

Yes, The Sick got me, too. The second strep test also came back negative, so I waited it out almost another week before heading back into the doctor's office. But after all that time, I was *still* under water. The clincher came when Mallory woke up at 2 a.m. with an earache. I settled her with Tylenol and put her back to bed, but thought she should get checked out the next day. And since the glands in my neck were so swollen that I couldn't stop coughing, I got myself checked out, too. The doctor we saw (part of a rotation - not our usual family doctor) could't believe I was still walking after 9 days with strep and also couldn't believe that I had 2 strep tests come back negative, because every symptom pointed to it. What can I say - I'm a medical marvel. I have been on antibiotics for 48 hours now and feel much, much better. Oh, and Mallory is on the same medication, since her ear infection was caused by strep, too. So if we've seen you in the past week... consider yourself exposed.

Of course, life doesn't stop just because everyone gets sick. We still went out and celebrated Family Day weekend by packing in some activities (in part because I started to feel better before taking another turn for the worse!) - we went to Boler Mountain to tube, visited my sister's family in Toronto, and went to a Family Day matinee in Lakeshore. I also took a 24 hour trip to Calgary for a meeting. This weekend we've had a skating party and a birthday party, and there's still one more day to go! For not being a busy time of year we certainly seem to be on the go a lot.

That doesn't mean we aren't trying to fit in some recuperation time where we can thoguh... so I fully expect this to be the February edition of Four People Twelve Times. I can't see rallying together for another photo again before month's end, even having the benefit of an extra day this year.

I suck at romantic holidays

I think this was first proven back in September when I ruined the 10th wedding anniversary weekend that Chad had planned for us by catching pneumonia.I seem to have done it again, becase on Valentine's Day I came down with the worst sore throat I have ever had in my life, and a general feeling of unwellness. Rather than doing anything special to celebrate, I came home, put on my granny jammies and went straight to bed.On Wednesday morning I went to my doctor's office and asked for a throat swab, because if I have a terrible sore throat and Liam has strep throat then it only makes sense that I have it too, right? Nope, not so. The swab came back negative and the doctor's office told me it is likely just a virus that will pass. Starting to sound familiar, right? Well, I think they are wrong. Today, about two thirds of my body is covered in a bright red rash that looks like sunburn, exactly the same as Liam had. If history is an indicator then I will have some blisters next and the doctor's office will call me tomorrow to say that the second test they ran (which gets sent out to a lab rather than diagnosed in-house) indicates that I need penicillin. Which I will gladly take, to get over this - because it's quite miserable.I've missed 1.5 days of work so far, and can't imagine I would be well enough to go in tomorrow even if I didn't have a planned flex Friday off with Mallory. I'm hoping to wrap this up mighty quick, though. We have a chock-full weekend planned and I don't want to miss out on any of it. Hoping that I am feeling better soon and, even more than that, that Mallory and Chad continue to evade whatever it is that Liam and I have caught.

The rest of the story

At 8 p.m. on Sunday night, we got a call from the emergency room. They had finally processed the swab they took from Liam on Friday night 'as a precaution' and were calling to let us know that he has strep throat, the rash from earlier in the week was likely scarlet fever, and that he needed to get onto some penicillin, pronto.

(And yes, I did feel a little smug, because scarlet fever had been my very first thought!)

So off we went to the pharmacy, where we got a bottle of pills and started Liam on them morning, noon and night. He had one at breakfast Monday morning and I packed one with his lunch on Monday and slipped a note to his teacher into his bag, letting her know what the pill was and establishing its credibility.

At about 9:10 a.m. (i.e. pretty much right after Liam had taken off his coat and given the note to his teacher) I got a phone call from the vice principal of the school. Liam was in the office with his pill, having been sent there by the teacher upon discovery of the note. The vice principal did one of those things where they try to tell you something without coming right out and saying it, and we had to go in circles a few times before I was really sure that I understood the message, but it turns out that you cannot let the school administration know that your kid is on medication. If you do this then you need your doctor to fill out a form and to go through a bunch of legal hoopla. However, if you just pack your child something in his lunch - nudge nudge, wink wink - and you let your child have it without telling the teacher what is going on, then everything is fine.

Silly me - here I was specifically NOT wanting the teacher to not know what was going on. Well, I guess what I mean is that I didn't want her to only kind of vaguely see Liam with a pill and then jump to the wrong conclusion about what it might be!

So we left it that Liam would continue to bring a pill each day but it would be part of his lunch and the school would essentially turn a blind eye to it. That lasted all of a few hours, until I went into the school to volunteer at Mallory's class party. En route to her classroom I ran into the VP in person. It turns out that there are three children at Liam's school who are allergic to penicillin and as luck would have it, they are all in Grade 1 (though perhaps not Liam's Grade 1).

So the new plan is to leave the pills in the office and have them administer them to Liam for us, since he cannot have the medication in the classroom. So I take it that it's a good thing I alerted the teacher to the fact that Liam had them after all??

I just hope he can get them down now... the first couple of pills went down no problem, but the last couple have involved lots of gagging and needing to bury it in a mouthful of yogurt to do the trick. I cut the ones I sent to school in half for him, hoping that makes it easier. I am pretty sure the vice principal will not have a tub of yogurt on hand for him to make taking them easier so I'm anxious to see how the first one goes.