the holiday plague

Saturday in the late night hours, the stomach flu hit the Aughtmon family.
It is a low down and dirty bug. It first caught Addison in its clutches.
Followed by Jack and an extremely reluctant Will.
(Why must it always arrive in the middle of the night when one is so
cozily tucked into bed?)
There was a parade of pale faced children in and out of bed,
empty trash cans stationed by their beds, running to the bathroom.
There was a rubbing of backs and bleary eyes and some pitiful
cries on the part of the children.  Stupid flu.
There was was some weeping and gnashing of teeth involved.
That would be me.
I can't stand when the children are so sad and it also brings back the
vivid memories of sleep depravity that haunted me in the early
(and not so early) parenting years.
There is always a great hope that when one child catches the stomach flu
that it will pass over the other children.
This is always a ill founded hope since you know from the past that
the flu tends to take out a family like a nicely lined up row of dominoes,
one right after the other.
Yesterday was spent at home with three boys wrapped in blankets
in the living room, watching Christmas shows
while taking timid bites of pedialyte popsicles.
I, myself, took to eating chicken broth and toast.
My stomach was on edge due to all the back rubbing and clean up
that was involved the night before.
I was praying heavy that Scott and I were not the next dominoes in line
to go down.
The boys are home again today, still a little pale, but we are moving on
to white bread and applesauce, in hopes that stomachs are more settled
and tomorrow will be a brighter day.
It's no fun to be sick during the holiday season.
I am going to continue to pray a hedge of protection around my own gut.
And I'm starting to use a new holiday greeting when I see folks,
"Merry Christmas and pass the hand sanitizer."
It think it's going to catch on well.