Sharin' Cousins

Jon's sister, her husband and their two kids came to visit this weekend.  They just recently moved back to the east coast and we're enjoying actually getting some face-time with them.  Jack was especially excited about spending a few days with his cousins Aviel and Gabe.  So excited that he was jumping around on the couch cushions for 10 minutes trying to watch for their car to pull up.  The anticipation continued to mount as he showed them around the house, his room and his toys.  And then that's where it stopped.

See Gabe and Jack are a little over a year apart and not so keen on cooperative play.  Or sharing.  So we adults played referee most of the weekend. 

I've been trying to think of ways to help Jack understand why some of the things he does are "wrong."  So this weekend I tried to focus on his heart.  It didn't work.
"Jack, sharing shows love.  It's nice to share with your cousins."
"No!  No sharing with cousins."

"Jack, sharing comes from a kind, clean heart.  When you don't share it makes your heart dirty... Open your mouth and let me see what your heart looks like."
"No. No clean heart!"

Forget that strategy.  We're going back to "Share with your friends ... or don't share, and sit in your room by yourself."

We also found that just putting on a movie helped alleviate the sharing situation, "Despicable Me" in this case.  Because that's the movie that Jack has requested on a daily basis since Christmas.  It's getting really old ... for everyone but him.  He runs out the house pointing at people saying, "Freeze ray!  Freeze ray!"  Or he finds the gray, rubbery middle of an old tennis ball, raises it in the air and yells, "I've got ... the mooooon!"

So while we adults weren't preoccupied with dissolving toddler tantrums, we played games, had a movie night and cheered for our football teams.  Us "girls" even got an afternoon of shopping in.  And that's where the trouble started.

Happy AND healthy!

Poor Jon.  He doesn't volunteer to cover for me for long periods of time very often, and when he does things tend to go horribly wrong.  So when he called to see if we were on our way home yet I figured something had gone awry.  Apparently Jude woke up from his nap crying, and when Jon went to get him he was covered in vomit.  As well as his clothes, hair, bed, blankets...  Pleh.  We had thought that maybe it was the result of getting shot in the face with a few squirts of "Shout!" that Jack had retrieved after opening the washing machine door and climbing up onto the detergent shelf.  But apparently it was some sort of stomach bug because before long Jack was suffering the same ill-effects. 

He sticks even closer to mom when he's not feeling so well.

We knew things were going downhill when we got buzzed out of church by Jack's Sunday School teachers because of his unbearable gas. :)  By the time we got home no one could bear to stand within a few feet of the poor guy.  He ended up with horrible diarrhea, that we're still dealing with today.  The night wasn't any better.  Jon and I tag-teamed cleaning up Jude's barf and changing out his pajamas and sheets throughout the night.  I was touched when my man got up with the boys in the morning and let me sleep in ... until I heard him yelling for me a few minutes later.  Both boys had "blow outs" and while he was attempting to clean up Jude, Jack threw up all over the bathroom.  My extra 5 minutes in bed ended all too quickly.

After almost 6 years of marriage, my husband and I are still learning new things about each other.  For instance, this weekend we learned that he'd rather clean up poop, and I'd rather clean up vomit.  So we've made a good team for the past 3 days.  I'm just thankful he had an extra day off work this week so I wasn't entirely on my own!  There's nothing quite like being stuck on a work call when your 3-year old has a potty emergency!

And so that's how it goes with kids.  When one's sick, the rest are bound to follow.  What a way to wrap-up the long weekend.  It's funny, I can't for the life of me figure out how to get Jack to share his toys.  But he seems to have no problem sharing his germs.  Hmmm maybe I can work this into a new object lesson ...