Five Germains

Poor Aiden.  Poor Mommy.  It’s 3:30 pm and we are exhausted from our early awakening this morning. I must admit it’s been worse for Aiden than for me.  He woke up with a stomach bug and while he is feeling better now and we got most of the yucky stuff done with this morning, he still has pretty bad stomach pains that are keeping this active boy on the couch.  He’s down for the count.  He’s eating saltines and watching some cartoons.  These are the days that I am thankful we have a TV and I can just let them watch ALL day long.  It really, really makes them feel better!    Then I forget about these days during healthy times and I curse that we have a TV and they ask me too many times to watch the shows that I’m not thrilled for them to watch.  I guess it would be weird for Luke and I to NOT have a TV considering we own a business that sells them! Anyway, happy for tv today!

I am really not used to waking up at 5 a.m.  I do remember the days that the boys woke up that early when they were babies and toddlers and even now on special holidays where they just can’t stay asleep until it’s light out….like this past Christmas when Eric woke up at 3 am and cried in outrage for an hour when we told him, no way, go back to bed.  The whole house lost sleep that magical Christmas Eve.  Won’t he be surprised when Mommy and Daddy super-glue him to his bed for a special holiday memory this year?!

One other thought about being awake at 5 a.m.  I know that many, many people actually HAVE to wake up at that time or even earlier for their jobs, etc.  Or for some crazy reason like exercising….just kidding friends, you know who you are and you know you are slightly nuts.  I feel pretty grateful that we generally don’t have to arise from our beds until it is light out.  Kyle puts us close to the edge of that comfort zone now that he’s in middle school and needs to be on the bus by 7-ish.  But mostly, we are some happy campers, relaxing in bed as long as we possibly can.

And for the photo of the sick boy:

Aiden drinking the dreaded pedialyte......

Come to think of it, my kids have already missed way too much school.  It has not been a good start with all of the injuries and sicknesses!  The boys have been in school for 25 days and Kyle has missed 1, Eric has missed 6, and Aiden has missed 2…..not a good record so far.  We are hoping October will get better in the attendance department!

We did have a great past weekend!  Despite the kind of yucky, rainy, chilly weather, we found a few hours of sunshiny greatness to head over to the Harvest Festival at the Berkshire Botanical Gardens.  During the entire 2 minute walk to the Botanical Gardens, the boys exclaimed about how lucky we were to live so close and not have to pay and they schemed ways to earn money by charging people to park at our house next year.  Luke was very involved in this conversation.  My 4 entrepreneurs.

Here’s some of the fun we had:

We are so coolAiden "tossing" a pumpkin - watch out all bystanders!

I temporarily forgot that Eric was 10 days post concussion and while he was all cleared and basically in great health, I was still being a prophet of doom and without knowing it, still screamed out to Eric, “no running!”, “no jumping”, “don’t move so fast”, etc ALL the time, making the entire family roll their eyes and ignore most of the “commands”.  However, at the festival, I seemed to forget my worries temporarily and I let Eric jump in the bounce house!  Halfway through, I nearly had a heart attack right there near the lovely old man selling maple syrup and started screaming to Luke, “get him out of there, get him out!”  Luckily, Luke knows how to deal with that “part” of me and diffused the situation quietly and efficiently.  Go Luke.  However, the next morning, Eric woke up feeling like throwing up, with a headache and even a fever, missing day 6 of school.  Turned out to be a quick, strange no real reason virus, but let me tell you, I couldn’t resist an “I told you so!” to Luke and anyone else who cared to listen….curiously enough, only a few real good girlfriends who I text like mad to when stuff like that happens! 

More Harvest Festival photos and I’m off to help the boys with homework.  Sometimes, I secretly wish I had homework.  Now that I’m not in school, I crave an essay to write (hence the blog) or maybe a worksheet to ponder.  Oh, the wonderful life of a child! 

I will leave you today with a photo of our final harvest from our garden.  The 4 deer in the garden this morning made it clear that whatever remains belongs to them.