Taking a step back

I've been home all day with a sick Luke. I'm pretty sure he threw up about 8 times in 6 hours. My mom was here in the morning to help keep Ellie entertained, thank God. He asked me to rock him for the better part of the afternoon as his fever spiked, Ellie would dance about his feet and he'd tell her, "please don't bother me right now." The dry-heaving was the worst. All in all I washed every towel we own, every slipcover (7 in all) on the 10 year old Ikea Ektorp sofa, my handmade crocheted blanket was not spared, as were 3 different sets of pjs. Pretty hellacious. We are now wondering who is next or are we in the clear?

So while I spent the day moving from room to room, cycling laundry, fighting an insane amount of loose feathers that fell from every couch cushion (if you're curious Ikea really uses real feathers in their Ektorp cushions), and failing to do any work-while-home-work, I realized it's just time to get back to basics. I have removed the facebook app from my iphone. Gasp. This is huge for me, I'm that quintessential FB oversharer and I think I've hit my quota.

The turning point was that I had put Luke back in his bed, he was passed out asleep and then I heard Ellie coughing and I thought she was throwing up so I went into her room. It was a false alarm with the sick thing but regardless we cuddled and she repeatedly said, "I got mom, I got mom, I got mommy mom mommy." Then we heard a thump and a thud and as we went to check on Luke we found him passed out on my bedroom floor. He woke up and dragged himself to my room for some reason, delirious with sick or something I'm not sure. He was burning up so I held him on the floor in the hallway between our rooms as Ellie played with a toy in the living room just 6 feet from us. He stared at me blankly with flushed red, burning cheeks as I stroked his hair and sang him a song. Then Ellie's toy made a funny noise and for some reason it snapped him out of his blank and listless stare and he smiled at me and laughed. The three of us laughed together and in that moment I knew I was missing out by always having the iphone in the palm of my hand. We sat there on the floor in the hallway for a good 15 minutes, no iphone, no computer, no television, just us.

So I think for awhile I'm also going to sign off on this blog thing and go old-school with this. I think 2011 is going to be about perspective and simplicity. I'm planning to have more hallway laughs than I ever have before.