Walking the walk

We've been more or less living in a sick ward for the past week. Big Dog and Little Dog have had some kind of miserable virus that has kept them knocked down with high fevers, a cough, congestion and vomiting. Oh the vomiting.

It finally feels like we're pulling out of it. Little Dog has recovered more or less, as long as you don't excite him too much. Big Dog hasn't had a fever or vomiting in days so we were able to send him back to preschool but now all he wants to do is sleep. Yesterday he came home and took a nap after preschool. He was still napping when I got home from work, kept on sleeping through dinner, woke up for a brief grouchy interlude then demanded to go to bed and slept almost through the night. And this is one of my kids that doesn't sleep. Unfortunately going to sleep at 3pm has a bit of a downside. He is wide awake and wants to get up at about 5am. We are not. This is a problem. We've been able to convince him to go back to sleep both days he's done an epic sleep, but not for long.

I'm completely done in by the week of broken sleep. I'm wiped out, I could probably sleep for a week if given half a chance. But seeing that moms are not college students, that chance never comes.

And even though they've been sick, and I'm functioning on an empty sleep tank I still feel lucky. See this past Sunday I walked in the March for Babies, the March of Dimes fund-raising walk. They support research into birth defect prevention, work to prevent premature birth and support pregnancy education to help make sure all babies are born healthy. But we aren't there yet. Not by a longshot. As part of the walk the organizers handed out leis to walkers who had been affected by a premature birth, a child born with birth defects and those who had lost a child. I was walking in a sea of leis. Many families wore more than one. And I was fortunate enough to have none. So though I was walking while my kids were home sick, and though I returned to clean up vomit after dinner and be woken multiple times that night, I am one of the most fortunate women in the world. Albeit covered in puke at times.

If you haven't made a donation to the March of Dimes, please consider doing so. They do amazing work.