Fevers, No Naps, Late-Night Mug Cookies: a Project Everyday Motherhood Post

This is the story about a day that seems too exhausting to be normal…and yet, in a house with 5 kids, I’ve learned that the unexpected is always around the corner. Last night was one of those unexpected nights, when the crazy just kept coming. I had truly been hoping for an early or on-time bedtime…but since I was flying solo, and the littlest boys were out of sorts, I just had to keep pushing through.

It all started with dinner. Or maybe it started two days ago, with a random high fever that our 5 yr old had. I thought he was better, but then in the middle of dinner, he randomly started to have a bloody nose, in combination with a fever, and a complete meltdown. By meltdown, I mean, my kid was quite sure he was dying from this (really awful) bloody nose. As I am trying to wipe the nasty away from face, keep him from swallowing it, urge him to calm down already because YOU ARE ABSOLUTELY NOT DYING FROM THIS BLOODY NOSE, my toddler was climbing on the toilet putting wet wipes up his nose and then into the tissue box.

At 6pm.

On an already long day.

When I am 27+ weeks pregnant and blessedly not queasy. Can you just imagine?

In the midst of all this, I am hollering to my girls to bring my phone so I can google the best nose bleed tricks, and the thermometer, because my man was feeling really hot.

Google told me to pinch and use ice. Ice turned into blueberries, because our handy little squishy cold pack was not cold. No, it had been sitting around in a bedroom instead of the freezer. So, I am trying to pinch the nose, hold the cold pack, and keep crazy toddler from now unrolling the entire roll of toilet paper.

Several minutes later (15 minutes of purgatory, I do so hope), my little dude averted what he was sure to be certain death. Toddler-child, our Firecracker, now needed a diaper change. And a bath. And to be in bed, since he napped all of 35.8 seconds in the truck earlier.

I needed a drink, a clean shirt, and a nap.

At 8:30pm, Firecracker was still awake.

Finally, 9ish pm and sleep filled the house with blissful silence. Now for that drink…er…no drinks for me, what else? Didn’t want ice cream. No Oreos in the pantry. Nothing baked. And then I remembered the amazingness of a mug cookie.

Oh, you have to try them. They are so good.

So that is what I did, made myself a darling and delcious mug cookie and sat down for a chick flick.

End of story. It was still too late when sleep and I collided. But this, my friends, is what normal is like. Not always the “put-together” me from a few days/weeks back…more a crazed and disheveled mama doing her best by the grace of God to love her little people and make it one day at a time.