henry's epic weekend

The apocalyptic stomach flu that we had anticipated on Friday, hit us on Saturday afternoon.  We headed off to the 5:00 church service thinking that everyone was feeling well and less than 20 minutes in, Charlie and I were summoned by the 2nd grade RE instructor who told us William was feeling sick.

By 5:45, the exact moment we walked in the front door to our house, William succumbed and over the next 12 hours,  Charlie - Carolyn - me - and finally, Elizabeth, fell victim to what was the most horrific virus I can recall in recent history.  Usually I dodge the stomach flu, but this one totally grounded me to the point that I couldn't even stand up without breaking in to a sweat and seeing stars. While Charlie and I were simultaneously leveled and hardly able to care for ourselves, let alone our eight-year-old triplets who were in equally dire straights, Henry - who had experienced the same virus two days earlier was fully recovered and in perfect five-year-old boy form.

(In my mental book of Parenting Nightmares, this scenario is in the Top 10.)

In an effort to keep him from swinging from the chandelier or otherwise breaking himself or something, he was granted access to our full movie collection and watched almost every superhero movie we have in our possession.  As a self-proclaimed "King of the Castle" he wore the same clothes for two days straight and for dinner, he sat at the head of the table and dined on pizza by candlelight - which is what he also had for lunch and dinner the following day. For breakfast he ate Cheerios, straight from the box. I think he might have also eaten a banana at some point, but am not entirely sure...



In the end, we all survived. And while this was one of the worst weekends in my memory - for Henry, it was probably one of the best.