Holiday Frustrations!

This blog serves as my documentation/journal of my personal trials and tribulations of motherhood. The good, the bad and the ugly! I like sharing the messy kitchen picture or the story of my kids picking their nose in the middle of the Christmas concert at school. I don't mind talking about the long days at home and mid-afternoon slumps. Its nice to talk about things that have worked for me and things that have NOT worked. Often I have others, through the blog or emails, share their own struggles and it makes me feel like I am not alone on this crazy journey.

Well today I'd like to share some of my personal frustrations about the holidays. I'd like to first start by saying that Christmas morning was magical. Four and five year olds are the perfect age for a magical Christmas. The kids woke up at 2am and 4am hoping Santa arrived. Finally at 6am we ran downstairs and jumped around in excitement when the kids realized Santa did indeed come to our house!

The magic came to an abrupt end with a 3am puker Christmas night! Yup...a stomach virus hit the house and it wasn't pretty....one man down! At 7am on December 26th another man was down...sore throat and a fever. The current status is two healthy kids and two kids not feeling so hot. Hoping the fun ends there! :)

Our long time healthy spell ended quickly. I guess I am a little compulsive and keep detailed mental notes of the kids health... I am continuously intrigued with why people get sick. I feel like I am very in tune with my own body and take action as soon as I feel something coming on. If I catch something early, I feel like 90% of the time I can stop it dead in it's tracks. But with the kids....its much harder to do that. So my obsession with being healthy is what drives me to learn about food, supplements, etc.

I always think I have it figured out.... We had not had a cold/flu since last May! But right when you think you have it figured out, you get hit hard with a reality check. You may remember my post about Lana's seizure and how that made me question everything I am doing. Anyway, I could see this illness wave coming from a mile away, even though I was hoping we would fight through it. Kids can not function on consecutive late nights, tons of junk food, etc. without getting run down/ill. We had about three parties, three nights in a row and I could slowly see my kids start to loose their luster. Their color changed, their eyes looked dull and BAM! I don't know about your kids, but mine never eat well at these parties. Usually its a roll with butter for dinner and then dessert. They are to excited to sit down and focus on their veggies. I don't blame them...

I will never forget a nutritionist I met with one time telling me every time you eat sugar, you can count on a suppressed immune system for 4-6 hours immediately following your sweet treat. So what is a mother to do? Be the weird/mean parent who doesn't let their child indulge at the holiday party? We are certainly paying the price for all of our partying! Was it worth it...thats hard to say! All in all, I feel extremely grateful for healthy kids and count my blessings daily. This bout of illness is manageable and short-lived....but challenging at times.

I am hoping your post holiday let down was a little less eventful! :)