The Spice of Life

My first taste of 2009 has been a string of sleepless nights and a case of cabin fever.
Coco very kindly waited until the 1st to come down with that stomach bug (at least we think that’s what it is). She’s been feverish and fussy for three days, with a temp of 104.7 last night. Our amazing girl has had the good fortune to get through her first year with barely a sniffle. And while I knew something like this was bound to happen, it’s still scary as hell. I’ve been a basket case at night and a zombie during the day. The house, of course, is a disaster. And for the past three days, my social interactions have consisted of calling up my sister the MD and crying into the phone and a trip to the doctor’s office where I held my baby down while they catheterized her for a urine sample. Oh and facebook, but that doesn’t really count…does it? Anyway, she seems a bit better tonight, and the docs are calling for baby Motrin (thank God for ibuprofen…) and observation at this point.

Christian’s got an unfortunate intestinal thing of his own going on, and poor little Henry has been left to his own devices, with papa in bed and mama taking care of baby sis. Our no video policy has gone out the window, and the boys have been busting out some of the random dvds we’ve managed to acquire over the years. These include Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, Rudolf the Red Nosed Reindeer and (Hank’s favorite) some forgotten Gregory Peck flick about WWII soldiers in Burma.

A bright spot in the midst of this bleak landscape has been my rediscovery of the bliss that is Tabasco. I remember using this sublime concoction fairly frequently during the Louisiana years, but for some reason it had slipped off my radar screen. My parents, in their infinite wisdom, brought some over on New Year’s Day to put on the black-eyed peas and conveniently left their nearly full bottle on our kitchen table. We’re going through it like mad, dumping it on eggs, chicken, leftover pork loin (it turned out fabulous, by the way). I can’t get enough of it. Almost put it on my oatmeal this morning but thought that might be taking things a little too far. It really is a little bit like sunshine in a bottle. Not sure if it’s coming out in my breastmilk. But now that I think of it, the onset of Coco’s malady corresponds awfully closely with my initial ingestion of the magic elixir. Oh man, I hope she’s not allergic. Don't know that I could go back to life without it.