The Thanksgiving Bug

Let's see if we can get caught up to the present time, shall we??

For Thanksgiving, we traveled to my parents. 

We took the flu along with us, though we had no idea at the time.  That bug was sneaky and spread like wildfire!

Shelly's crew brought it over the Wednesday before Thanksgiving but they didn't know they had it when they came over.  Wednesday evening two of her family members were throwing up but they thought it was food poisoning so didn't really say anything about it to us. 

Thanksgiving Day, Aren took a short nap in the van on the way and didn't get a "real" nap.  He started getting cuddly and clingy late afternoon, right before dinner.  While he was laying on my shoulder I started wondering if I should put him down just for a quick half hour snooze to get him through until bedtime.  Then he picked his head up and stared at me.  He opened his mouth in an odd way and I was afraid he was choking on something he had been hiding in his mouth.  Just as I was getting ready to do a finger-sweep in his mouth he let loose. 

It sent my aunt running to another room to avoid seeing it - she's the part of the population that will get sick if she sees someone else get sick. 

By the time 30 minutes had passed he had thrown up 5 times, Aren and I had gone through three shirts and Biju had gone through two.  Thank you to my parents for loaning us clothes!!

Here we are pre-vomit.

And Aren wearing a shirt that had been left behind by some small member of the family.  Don't worry, that is actually water on his shirt that he had spilled.

Still, we didn't know it was the flu at that time.  I started looking through Mom's pantry/laundry room to see if Aren had found some bleach or other toxin.  His vomiting had come on so suddenly I was sure he had ingested something he shouldn't have. 

He wasn't too interested in dinner but everyone else enjoyed the feast. 

Closer to bedtime, though, Ajay started throwing up and I figured it had to be the flu.  And I was worried that since we caught the bug in the short two hours that we saw Shelly's girls on Wednesday that we would've passed the bug on to everyone in the family. 

It turns out we did give it to everyone.  By the time a week had gone by there were 20 members of our family had had some version of the flu.  Luckily, it took it's time going through the family.  I was so grateful that Biju was home while I was sick so he could care for the children. 

Poor Aren had it twice!!  How is that even possible? 

Here he is cuddling with Biju (don't tell him I posted a picture of him with bedhead) - about 2 minutes after this photo he got sick all over himself and Biju.  Luckily, it was only breast milk and water!

And once Alex fell asleep on the couch in the morning we knew he had it.  Poor kid - stitches and the flu at the same time.

We're hoping we've done our time with the flu for the season.  Crossing our fingers we're golden for the rest of winter!