We skipped church today because I’m still recovering from some virus. It started in my stomach with body aches and the like and moved to my throat along with some other weird symptoms. Harvey had a fever for like four days, but seems better now. He’s learned how to open door knobs, safety locks, safety door knob locks, and climb out of his crib all in the last week. It has made him excited to try out his new skills, often pulling him from sleep at 2, 3, 4, and 5 in the morning and very rarely does he feel he should go back to bed, so it is a battle every time to get him to go to back to sleep. I think it took me even longer to recover from whatever this bug is because I just wasn’t getting the sleep I needed to recover. Andy has helped when he could but he’s had six work days this week so he’s pretty spent too. He got sick too, but recovered more quickly. Life at the hospital is pretty rough. Lots of nurses are quitting to become traveling nurses and the hospital can’t afford or find new ones to fill their vacancy. Andy’s lost two pharmacists recently so he’s now doing the work of a resident, filling in for the gaps in the nursing staff workload, and doesn’t get the extra help from an in-house pharmacist. He’s pretty good at what he does though, so he carries on and I haven’t seen it affect his spirits too much, though he does seem wiped out. When he’s home, we make the most of it. We went to the zoo with our neighbor and her kids on his one day off the week after Christmas.
Lindsay and I joke about being “sister wives” but a lot of times it feels that way. We have each other’s backs. When I’m having an off day she takes the kids. When she’s at her whits end with Afton, I have her come over to my house. I had a hard time realizing Andy and I were done having kid for a few reasons, but the main was was I really wanted Bev to have a sister. Afton has filled that role beautifully. They fight, they hug, they’re best friends, and love seeing each other on a daily basis.
Christmas break went by fast. I really missed being close to family this Christmas, but Andy and I had a great Christmas with family friends and our little kiddos.
Consequence to Harvey escaping his crib, we’ve been trying to transition Harvey to sleep with his brothers. He isn’t so sure about it some nights, but some nights it looks like this. 
Nothing makes me happier than seeing my husband playing with our kids. 
Harvey also went through a three day phase of ripping off all of his clothes– diaper included… that seems to have passed for now…
It is beginning to feel like “Ground Hog’s day” with COVID. The spikes, the fear, the canceling of activities. Church was only an hour today and we shouldn’t have even had that, because all of the leaders were out sick and the speakers couldn’t make it because they were sick too. Wesley Methodist preschool canceled this whole week due to staff with COVID and therefore a staff shortage. This new strand seems to be a lot more contagious, but Andy says though its causing congestion in the hospital due to full beds, less staff, and a filled waiting room, it seems to be a lot less dangerous. He said we need to keep clean, wear masks when feeling a symptom, but to continue on with our lives, this COVID is the new flu. Dangerous for some, but not curable and it isn’t going away so we can’t keep living the way we have the past two years. I hope that once this spike settles down we can get back to normal instead of relapsing into fall of 2020. Those were dark times for me, dark times that I never want to revisit.
I’m gonna leave this blog with one little plea. If you have any symptom. Just stay home. If you HAVE to have a COVID test for a medical procedure or work/ school, then go to one of the COVID testing centers– not the ER. They are swamped, overwhelmed and BURNT OUT. Let them have the little bit of life they have left in them to treat the patients who are deathly sick. Only go to the emergency room if it is… oh wait, what’s that? AN EMERGENCY… sorry, not sorry. I know I’m being sassy, but seriously I see these medical workers and they are doing ALL the can to see as many patients as they can. Andy’s seeing patients IN the waiting room, discharging them FROM the waiting room. It is really just going to give you a bad day for waiting for hours to be seen and cause more congestion for the hospital. Stay home if you don’t NEED a covid test and do your best to not let it spread. Stay safe, stay positive, reach out when feeling isolated. Be creative and we’ll get through this.