Daley Ponderings

Christmas Eve morning, Jonathan threw up. It turned out to be a stomach bug, so the performance repeated itself several times.
We took a bath and napped in a chair. (He seemd to throw up more if he was lying down, so I held him upright and tried to sleep myself.) We tried to nurse, but it just put food in his stomach - no good. It's a good thing he likes to suck on ice cubes, because that was the only way to get fluids into him slowly enough. We tried giving water in his sippy cup, but he was too eager.

It's a hard thing to tell a still actively nursing 13 month old that he isn't allowed to nurse. But we cuddled a lot. It was even harder, when we felt it was time to try, to stop him after only a few minutes. But eventually, he was able to keep down more and more, and by the evening he was feeling well enough for us to go to a Christmas Eve party. We had fun, playing pool and video games and talking and staying late.

Christmas morning, we slept in, since Jonathan is not yet old enough to rise early with anticipation. We had eggs for breakfast and then went downstairs to have our own Lessons and Carols. I wanted Jon to open my present to him, so he brought it down, along with his present to me!

I gave him a King James Bible, since the only King James we have is the little blue Gideon version, which doesn't have the Old Testament. He gave me some crysanthemums and a very lovely card listing the things he loves about me.

He found a lessons and carols outline online, and we spent a beautiful morning singing hymns and reading scripture.

I don't remember much about the rest of the day, because I, too, got the stomach bug. Jon took care of me, cleaning up, playing with Jonathan downstairs, and making me some Mother Tea when the time came to try "eating" again. Throughout the middle of the night I ate crackers one at a time, washed down with water.

Jon also struggled with queasiness, but it might have been psychological because he never actually got sick. By morning, I was feeling well enough to go to church, though I was really tired. I took a nap in the nursing mothers' room.

In the afternoon, I took another nap, and then we packed for our drive to NH. We went to bed at 9, having aimed for 8. The plan was to rise at 4, but Jonathan stirred at 2:30 and Jon could not get back to sleep by 3, so we decided to go ahead and get up.

We left at 4:15. Jonathan and I took a nap in the morning, and after that the travel adventures began. I struggled the whole time with nausea (I guess I had not gotten to 100% yet.) It was very cold outside and the washer fluid appeared to be frozen. Jon bought a bottle of fluid and periodically stopped the car to pour some on the windshield so he could see to drive. At some point the car started stalling again, if he drove less than 20 mph.

At one stop, we had parked badly, because the car had stalled, and when we went to leave a truck had parked near us making it hard to get out. So Jon did a 10 point turn, having to restart at each "point." This was directly after he had said to me, "I don't know how many starts we have left."

We prayed hard, and called Jon's parents, who called their mechanic. By the grace of God, we did make it to the mechanic's lot, and then transferred our stuff to the Daley's van, which Dad had come to pick us up in. We arrived at around 5, after thirteen hours on the road. It was a wonderful relief to step into their house.