If you're a parent, you can probably relate to how I've been feeling lately (or at least I hope you can). Can I just say that Satan certainly knows where we are the weakest, and for me, it's my worth? This has been a challenging week for me, one I wasn't going to even blog about because of the fear of what people might think. Isn't that just down right silly? Believe me, it probably keeps me writing half of what I would write (and sometimes that's a good thing). Ok, Hillary, get to the point, right? I have to open camp this morning, so I only have about 7 minutes to get this out.

So Monday, Owen's sitting in assembly looking a bit sluggish. I get down on my knees and beckon him over where he sits on my squatted knee and gives me a giant hug. Uh oh, he's warm. Immediately I take him to the nurse. Yep, Owen has a fever. Normal people with normal jobs would probably leave right away, but given that he had absolutely no other symtoms, I let him hang with the nurse for a while and then take a nap. By the time we got home that day, his fever was gone. It must have been something he was fighting off and he won...not so fast. On Tuesday, Neil stayed home with him half a day and then brought him to camp. Turns out that the church's policy is that if he had a fever in the last 24 hours, he can't come to camp. Being the calm, cool, and collective person that I am, I totally freaked out on Michelle, Karin, and Amy D when I realized that Owen was pulled from his group. But there was a bit more going on than just Owen's symtomless illness.

Moments prior to this, I had just arrived back at camp from Madison's six month check up. It seems that not only is she still tiny, but she's actually lost a pound since her 4 month visit. The whole way back to camp, I was kicking myself for not knowing. Of course, I'd noticed that she was tiny, but how did I not see that she'd actually lost weight? Needless to say I was already in a vulnerable place, and then to come back and see Owen sitting in the big green chair (that is the coolest chair ever) in the nurse's station, I just lost it. It had nothing to do with whomever was in the room. I was feeling like a failure and easily went into fight or flight mode. Suddenly I felt the need to protect myself and my family.

We went straight home. It'd been a long time since I was home at 2:30 in the afternoon. I wasn't sure what to do with myself or my kids. How sad is that? I could tell my patience was thin, and this nagging feeling in my gut would not go away. Satan kept feeding me the lies. "How could you not have known?" "A good mom would have kept her kids home all day today?" "You're just not enough for either of them."

Oh but it gets better. My symtomless kid starts complaining that his ear hurts. Oops, maybe he is sick and has an ear infection. I decided that a good mom would take her son to the doctor, and that's just what I did. I even asked for a strep culture even though his throat wasn't even the slightest bit pink. The doctor thought I was being overzealous, but since he'd been exposed to it at camp, I thought it was best to be sure. Never in a million years did I expect that test to come back positive. I mean his hurting ear turned out to be a mild case of swimmer's ear, and let's remember that he has no other symptoms. Seconds after I got the prescription filled for the ear drops, the nurse calls...positive for strep. Are you kidding me? Let's just stab another dagger in my heart. Immediately I turned around, marched back into the pharmacy, and got him some amoxicillan (which he took right away at 12:19). Of course this means he has to be away from other kids for 24 hours. He'll be at camp today at 12:20 (or somewhere around there), after my more than awesome hubby hangs out with him this morning.

Actually when it comes to sicknesses, I don't get all germaphobic, but I see how people respond to sick kids. It's like they have leprosy or something. Owen got strep from another boy at camp, and somebody may get it from him. I get the whole not wanting to get sick thing, but considering the incubation period on most illnesses, there is no way, we can protect our kids from everything. Owen had strep and it was barely noticeable, if at all. Normally, he's a pretty healthy kid despite my lack of germaphobia.

And when it comes to Madison, the doc thinks it's simply a caloric thing. We went through this with Blake, not this extreme, but still the same thing. We are going to beef up her solid intake and recheck her weight in 2 weeks. Right now, I am focusing on the calories and the recheck, trying desperately not to think about what happens if she's still not gaining in 2 weeks. I'd appreciate your prayers for all my kids as well as myself in this time.

Gotta go...or I'm going to be late.