We’ve been having a rough time lately.

Between Phlegmy Emmy and BarfAna, we’ve just about filled our entire sickness quota for 2011. I was even sick for a while… this week? Last week? You know it’s bad when you can’t even remember when you were sick, when they were sick, and who exactly did what during said sickness. Praise God for Wes who was Super Immuno Man through it all and who discovered, in the process, what exactly it’s like to be “Mommy for a Day” as he took care of the girls while I recovered. His conclusion, at the end of that day? “Well, that was exhausting.” Indeed. To his credit, the girls were actually disappointed when life went back to normal, telling me, “But Papi made us tater tots!” Four and a half years of my life spent serving these girls day in and out, and a couple of servings of tater tots was all it took to have them ready to replace me. Oh, tater tots — the power you wield with your greasy goodness!

The great news in all of our sickness drama is that we’ve all recovered. Whew! Honestly, we’re not a sickly bunch of people, but it feels like at least once every few months, we just pass illnesses back and forth with each other. Which, I guess, means that we ARE a sickly bunch of people. Hmm.

Even with all the ick and gore, spirits have still been high. I attribute most of this to Emmy, who has discovered that she is, in fact, the funniest person ever born. She’s been spending more and more time clowning around for Ana, doing the silliest impressions (of me, mainly) to get her laughing. The hilarity has gotten so high that when Emma protests about something, Ana thinks she’s joking and begins to laugh, which gets Emma laughing. Then, there’s a whole lot of mock screaming and giggling and I can’t even hardly tell if anyone is honestly upset or if it’s all some joke. I told Wes, “How did WE produce HER?!” He told me, “Oh, that’s my personality when I’m not stressed out.” Which leads me to believe that Wes would be way too goofy for me if he didn’t have at least a little bit of stress to mellow him out. A big thank to you to vocational ministry for taking care of that!

Emma has been helping me with a little early spring cleaning as we’ve felt well enough to tackle it. My rule of thumb has been that if I haven’t worn it/used it/seen it since before Emma herself was born, it’s probably safe to throw it out. She’s also been helping me with some scrapbooking, stealing pictures of the dogs from the stack left to be sorted and shouting, “It’s a picture of BEEEEECEEEESSSS!” She snuck one out to Ana, who now has a picture of Charlie proudly displayed on her princess (pretend!) make up table. It’s heartwarming to see how much Ana loves that picture of Charlie… since she could take or leave the real thing. (The feeling is totally mutual on Charlie’s part.)

Better go and see what we’ve got planned for today…