A Mommy Story

Thanksgiving was quite busy for us. On the day itself, we drove an hour south to visit with my mom’s family, and then we drove 30 min. north of home (an hour and 30 min. total) to visit my father’s side of the family. We had a full meal at the first stop, and then just dessert at the second stop.

While at my father’s, we found out my cousin and his wife were in town with their daughter, so we stopped by my aunt’s to visit with them, too. We started the day at 9:30am and didn’t get back home until roughly 7pm.

Cordy was a trooper most of the day. She napped in the car between families, and even ate a little food for everyone. When visiting with my cousin, she didn’t even mind that the much smaller 16 month old was trying to bully her. It’s a good thing Cordy isn’t a bully – she’s big enough that she could do some damage to another kid.

As usual, after mingling with relatives, all of whom came from different areas and brought not only good food to eat, but also the exotic viruses from their particular region, at least one of us was destined to become sick. It seems to happen every year. And yet people wonder why I can’t stand kissing relatives and dislike them kissing my child.

Cordy started us out on Friday night, by having 4 messy diapers within a 12 hour period. She’s normally an every-other-day kind of girl, so we knew something was up. And worse, these messy diapers seemed to be full of flesh-eating acid, because each one caused more and more redness on her bottom until she had a massive, raw diaper rash.

At first we worried it might be a reaction to something she ate at Thanksgiving. We’ve been suspecting lately that she might be allergic to cinnamon. I know, weird allergy, right? But every time she eats anything with cinnamon, she usually has a bad diaper rash a day or two later. And at Thanksgiving she had her fill of pumpkin pie and cookies, all laced with cinnamon.

But then Saturday night, at the height of her diaper pain (the rash was so bad we had to give her Motrin to help her deal with the pain – the poor kid couldn’t sit down), I started to feel ill. Dinner was tough to stomach, and I was feeling really tired and worn out. Then Sunday the stomach bug hit me full on. I think I’m mostly back to normal today.

Today Cordy seems better. Her rash is starting to scab and hopefully heal, and she’s smiling again. I must remember to call this week and get us both in for our flu shots before the next family gathering. Who knows what nasty bugs a relative will bring with them to Christmas?

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