Worth Doing

Here is a recap of my past few days.  What should I clean up first?:  The vomit soaked jammies or the stinky diarrhea diaper in the bathroom.  The chocolate pudding puke trail from the living room to the bathroom or the chair where the vomiting all started?  The sticky spots on the floor where unhungry children have thrown their food or the pile of dirty dishes stacking up?  Cole is sick and Case is sick.  Neither sickness is pretty.  I keep wondering when this streak of illness will finally leave this home.  Every time someone gets sick I am totally deflated.  It’s been going on 9 or 10 months and every month we have dealt with multiple illnesses.  January brought the hope and promise of a new year and I foolishly believed we would have a healthier year.  That’s why it was particularly devastating and difficult when two nights ago Cole was up almost 20 hours straight with an ear infection.  He wanted to be held standing up not sitting down, rocked side to side not back and forth and would scream if you tilted him even slightly into a reclining position.  That night was hard on both of us to say the least.   However while I was standing in the middle of our dark cold living room at 5 am swaying from side to side for going on 2 hours zoning out to some happier place while trying not to fall asleep and drop him, he lifted his little head, grabbed my face with both hands and kissed me on the lips.  It almost felt like he was saying thank you.  That little kiss kept me going the rest of the day and the next night when it started over again.  It’s the little things that make the hard things worth doing.