STONE SOUP: When Your Crew Gets the Flu

Saturday, January 26, 2013

When Your Crew Gets the Flu

It's bad enough when just you get the flu, but when you have a house full of children who slowly pass it around, it can get a little tricky. Staggered fevers, overlapping coughing fits, and plenty of GRUMP.
Last week we had five of our middle children catch the junk, after I did. At one point, we had 4 children lying around the family room in nests, piled high with blankets. And really- I didn't even know we owned that many glasses and mugs.
To wrap up the week, Kenny and Baby came down with it. Here is Bubbs just hanging out with his Daddy.

So how does a large family handle it all? Well, this Mom starts with some kind of a plan. You know, make some soup, buy some juice, gear up for handing out Vitamin C and fresh water every couple of hours. I use Colloidal Silver Plus (nasty, but it works) with anyone who seems really bad. And we pull out lots of audio CD's and some movies we haven't seen in a while. Long movies, like Ben Hur and Pollyanna. And since my worker bee's were out of commission all week, I sort-of cleaned house, and sort-of didn't, if you know what I mean.

The first couple of days are okay, but then it starts to get to me. And so there are some tears (from the children and from me) because we have to stay home from something fun once more, and there are some sighs because I'm just sure we are going to miss the whole rest of the year, lying around with the flu.

But, as Little Orphan Annie used to sing, 'The Sun Will Come Out Tomorrow'. And on Friday, it did, and I gathered up anyone who felt the need for fresh air, and we headed to the park. Just to break up the grumps.

We walked around the prairie dog villages, and had a little science lesson. Hey, I can't let the kids get behind in their school work just because they're sick.

Here, the kids are yelling 'hello!' down into a hole. And they got some pretty funny responses in return.