Odds & Ends (and a Peaceful New Year)

It's been a few days since my last post, twelve to be exact. However, I've been wrapping myself up in a cozy quilt of home, family, and Christmas. Sitting in front of a roaring fire that my husband has lovingly built and watching Willow Grace play happily with her new toys in front of the Christmas tree while I tackle a few dozen thank you notes has taken most all the extra time I've had, not that I've had much.

It turns out that Willow Grace has needed almost as much tending to out of the hospital as she did in. While most people might see Willow Grace and think that she looks close to normal, there are things a mother's eye do not miss. The pale shade of her cheek, the faint dark circles under her eyes, the lack of luster in her hair, the tendency to whine -- these all do not belong to my daughter. She's also been getting up between two and four o'clock every morning and staying up. We both are in desperate need of more sleep. Never has she been so clingy or so quick to cry. Since she was a newborn she was low-maintenance and seemed to have a near perfect balance of dependence and independence. However, that seems to have changed a bit since she became ill. The doctor assures me that this is quite common in recovering from HUS and an extended hospital stay and all will be back to normal in a few weeks. I had to take her back to the doctor last week. She was looking quite ghost-like, was coughing incessantly, and often threw up whenever she coughed too hard or cried too hard. It turns out that it's just a really nasty cold made worse by her compromised immune system. The doctor said it would be another couple weeks before her immune system is strong enough to fight off much, and so we've decided to keep her out of school for at least a week and maybe two.

Both Chris and I ended up at the walk-in clinic yesterday morning. It was kind of weird to be seen as a couple, but since we had basically the same symptoms, I guess they thought they'd "kill two birds with one stone" (the birds being the illnesses and not us). We had already sent Willow Grace to stay with his parents on New Year's Eve to help protect her from whatever was going on with us; she certainly didn't need anything more to deal with. It turns out that both of us were diagnosed with sinusitis, and I had also developed bronchitis. A pair of steroid shots and a couple of z-packs later, and we were good to good to go!

Upon arriving home from the hospital a couple weeks ago, I've been busily trying to get the house into some sort of organized state, a battle that I feel starts fresh every morning, complicated somewhat by tending to a recovering daughter and then falling ill myself. Of course I won't be taking down my tree until next Saturday. The twelve days of Christmas ends on Wednesday, and Saturday will be my first chance to tend to that task. That's fine by me; we were so late in getting it up. I really don't mind enjoying it a little while longer. However, perhaps after all the holiday trimmings are put away things will start to fall into place a little easier.

A new year. And so we begin again. The new semester starts tomorrow, and I am truly looking forward to being back with my colleagues and friends and to getting back into a normal schedule. This year, I am a full-time substitute, which keeps me quite busy but generally spares me taking grading or other work home. For the first month back to school, however, I'll be teaching eighth grade science. Yes, eighth grade science for a month! I'm a little nervous about this, especially since my natural talents tend to be in the humanities and not in the areas of math and science. However, I relish a challenge, and I am sure that I can meet this one. In the realm of new beginnings, I also haven't worked out since before Willow Grace fell ill, and so my plan is to start that back up again tomorrow. Yes, I know I've been ill and out of practice; don't worry. I'll start out slow. I think I'll kick it off with some Pilates and light jogging this week to get myself loosened up and ready for something more strenuous by next week.

One final note: This morning, I was listening to a preacher who said that Christmas was about reconciliation and peace, not between men and each other but between men and God. When the angels said, "Peace on earth," they meant between men and God. Either I had never thought of it that way before or it never really struck me as it did this morning. I had sometimes wondered why there wasn't more peace between men. In discussing this with Chris, he said, "Of course, there will never be peace between men.... A man must have peace with God before he can have peace with men." And so, this year, my wish, my prayer, for you, my dear friends, is that you may have peace in your home, with your family, and with all those you come into contact but most of all with Jesus Christ.