Corona 3, Biggs 2

As of the posting of this blog, that is our current covid tally. We've had a couple near misses with covid in the past with close contacts but this exposure at Kita couldn't be avoided. The all day end-of-the-year Kita trip to the Dinopark turned out to be a super spreader event.

Cute little adventurers on their way to get some Covid exposure on the 2 hour round trip bus ride to the Dinopark.

Unfortunately, we came into this round beat down. Paul has a bunch of projects at work, all culminating in a business trip to New York this Tuesday. Per usual, when Paul needs to put in extra hours, I ask that he take entire weekend days so that we can get them back as flex days. It is still a sore spot as I usually have to remind him to take the days off more than once or they never get rescheduled as days off during "less busy" periods. 

Monday I woke up not feeling great, which unfortunately is kind of normal these days. Carmen is ready to ditch the diapers at night, but still hasn't grasped that she can use the potty by herself at night without my help. We are combating her waking me up by waking her up an hour after she goes down to use the potty, but she often wakes up around 5 am to go again. In any case, Carmen, Hugo, and I all tested negative so off to Kita they went.

Throughout the day I felt progressively "weirder". I couldn't help but feel reminded of going into labor where I never really knew if the Braxton Hicks contractions were the real thing or not. As my cousin Chase once told me, "you'll know". After I fell asleep putting Carmen to bed, "I knew" something was definitely off and sure enough:

Much less exciting than a pregnancy test.

Yup, 12 hours before Paul is scheduled to fly to his biggest meeting in three years, no go. This is the part of the story that gets personally frustrating. As I run the "health" department of Team Biggs (although Paul runs the "safety" department), I knew this was an automatic - "no one is going anywhere". Paul was slow to catch-on and even committed to presenting virtually at the conference the next day.

It is at this point where I informed loved ones that I had covid and most people wrote "I hope your symptoms are mild". I think the best prayers are for sanity, swiftness, and a quick return to negative status. Even with the help of three vaccinations, these were the worst head and body aches of my life. Thankfully I had some Hydrocodone left over from a similarly lame period of my life, so I could use it to get some sleep. Tylenol and IBprofin were not going to cut it.

On Tuesday I woke up, took some Hydrocodone and sent Paul downstairs with the kids. Every hour Carmen was knocking on my door, and I was like, "seriously, Paul? Why can't you watch her?" When I went down this was the scene:

"Daddy has been sleeping all morning." Crosby

So yeah, I've pretty much been on kid duty ever since. Paul still looks like that, but he did find some energy to present for an hour that night. I should count it progress from the Thanksgiving five years ago when he worked while he had the stomach flu. He was typing and barfing into the bucket next to his desk while I was downstairs with Crosby on a holiday. German work culture is more humane, but Paul has not totally assimilated. 

When I couldn't move, I had a couple activities for them in the morning - baking muffins and making play dough (recipe from Dudu). 

Now that I am feeling better our isolation modus operandi is:

- get some energy out in the morning:

They know I am making them "exercise".

- Let the boys watch a screen while Carmen and I nap. 

- In the late afternoon we watch a family movie. An adult needs to be present for Carmen to sit for a movie. She's still too little to focus otherwise. 

Quick reviews:

Sing 2 was awesome. There was one part that could be a little scary with a grumpy Lion but could be fast forwarded. The music is so good and the jokes for adults are silly.

Good Guys was also a winner. We didn't love the books as much as Dogman. But, I know I would love Good Guys when I saw this review from Sojourners.

Paul watched Pets 2 with the kids while I "took a break" to do laundry and put clothes away. I think they liked it.

The silver linings of this whole bummer of a week is that Carmen has hand, foot, and mouth, so even if she didn't have covid she wouldn't be able to go to Kita. Additionally, our first visitors of the summer are coming next week, and we're hopeful we'll be out of isolation before they arrive.

I wish I could say that the kids really stepped up to the plate and helped. There were moments of:

Crosby entertaining the littles. 

But for the most part they couldn't remember that they needed to be quiet/relaxed/peaceful because Mommy's head hurts and Daddy is sleeping. Paul says their behavior was their usual. Thankfully during the night they didn't wake me up. (knock on wood) They might have little goldfish brains but they know not to poke a hibernating mama bear. On that note, I need to move one little bear out of my bed into hers, and then sleep in her warm spot.