The icky sickies

We've been down and out at our house. One at a time we succumbed to a gross flu. Blech. (A word of caution for non-mamas, this post contains the nitty-gritty mommy talk! With words like puke.)

My weekend of facebook statuses (statusi?, lol) went something like this;

Thane has the pukies. Maybe it was the sub?

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Oop, Seth and Claire are sick, definitely not the sub. Troy and I are crossing our fingers we don't get sick.

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Troy's down now. Maybe I won't get sick?

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I'm sick. Ugh.

But I'm back to vertical, a little bit of the achy headache feeling left but in general very much better! A few good things came of our 'downtime' though.

1. New Brunswick's telecare program is awesome. You call in, talk to a real live nurse, and they advise you on tips for what you're dealing with, and mostly whether a trip to the doctor is necessary. I called this time for poor little Clairey, I've never had such a little one with the pukies. She just seemed too little! I wasn't really thinking we needed to visit the doctor, but I was wondering how quickly dehydration can become a problem for such a tiny person. The nurse mostly said to just get water into her (they also mentioned that pedialyte, 1/2 Gatorade, or popsicles will do as hydration in a pinch for the kid not wanting the water), but she also gave concrete numbers about when it's okay to try food at all (bland food, 8 hours after the last throw-up), and when to worry about dehydration (no wet diapers in 8 hours). Also, you can probably get back to real food in 24 hours. Nice little tidbits of info to have under your mommy belt. It was also nice for me to hear that just water and no food really is okay when dealing with a stomach flu, sometimes I feel like you should eat something just so you'll have something to throw up? Pleasant mommy-talk, I know.

2. Troy and I work well as a team. On Friday, I'm sorry to say, I was really worried that if whatever Thane had was viral, I did not have time to catch it. We had a big fundraising event at the gallery on Saturday that I could not picture how I would be able to call in sick for. So Troy took over sick care duty like a champion, while I only asked if there was anything if I could do from afar. Then Sunday afternoon when Claire started up, Seth was only 20 minutes behind and we had two little pukies on our hands. Our Sunday couch held two parents, two buckets, and two sad little babes. There was only one incident of Claire puking on poor Seth. Sunday night Troy got hit with it, and Monday I held down the fort, the laundry, and even mowed half the lawn while the three of them recouped, sleepy and sore. Tuesday we switched and Troy brought me water on the couch, juggled the kiddies who were feeling better, and even finished the lawn!

3. While watching A LOT of Ellen this weekend, Gwen got added to our baby name list. This was sparked by an appearance of Gwyneth Paltrow on the show, for her part in Iron Man. We really like this name, it might be a winner! Would you spell Gwyneth that way, or Gweneth, or Gwenyth? I'm looking for the most common spelling, the way you would naturally spell it if you heard it...