Things Can Always Get Worse...

Several of my closest relatives have already heard this story (sorry!) and I always fear that I tell far too many poop and barf stories on this blog, but I just have to vent about my Saturday evening.

Saturday evening Alan and I were doing the 35-minute drive home from Alan's parents' house when Jared started rubbing his left ear on his shoulder over and over again and whimpering slightly. Since he had had a cough and runny nose all week, I thought perhaps he had an ear infection and that we should take him to an Instacare on the way home. So we went to an Instacare and found out that yes, he had ear infections in BOTH ears! The doctor gave us a prescription for Amoxicillin. It was about 8:30 at this point, and we would have just waited till the next morning to fill the prescription if it wasn't going to be Sunday the next day. But we felt it was important to fill the prescription that night and get some medicine in Jared's system. Since the Walmart pharmacy was already closed, we drove to the nearest Walgreens (about 15 mins away from our house) only to find out that THIS particular location did not have a 24-hour pharmacy, and the pharmacy was already closed. (I thought that ALL Walgreens had 24-hour pharmacies!) We called the Instacare back and asked the receptionist if she knew where the closest open pharmacy was, and she told us that it was at a Walgreens about 30 minutes away!

We were extremely discouraged since it was way past Jared's bedtime already, but we decided that Alan should take me home and I would put Jared to bed while Alan would make the long trip to get the Amoxicillin. Then we would just wake Jared up to give him a quick dose when Alan got home. Anyway, as we are driving back to our house, figuring out this plan and feeling sorry for ourselves that we were being inconvenienced in such a way, Jared starts coughing so hard that he THROWS UP!! I was sitting in the back of the car next to him and, of course, try to catch as much of it as I can in my hands (how many of you have been there, done that?!) We were literally half a mile from our house by this time. We got home and took off Jared's coat and clothes in our cold garage, and then I cleaned him up and put him to bed while Alan threw Jared's clothes and coat (and my shirt) into the washing machine and washed his puked-on car seat pad by hand in the bath tub. Then Alan left our house to make the long trek to get the prescription; he returned very late. I washed my hands about 10 times that night and they still smelled like puke for the longest time!

To make matters worse, I had been invited to a girls-night-out party at my neighbor's house that night that I was really excited to go to (we have lived in our house for 9 months and still don't really have friends, although everyone in our ward is REALLY nice to us), so I was bummed out to miss a good chance to get to know people. I know we can't plan when our children get sick, but wouldn't it be nice if it just always happened to be on a day where you had nowhere to go?

Jared is always so sweet when he is sick. It doesn't seem like barfing phases him at all! He was more upset by the fact that he had barf all over his clothes than the fact that he had a cold and two ear infections. He was being all chatty and cute when I was reading him stories before bed that night. We kept him home from nursery on Sunday, although honestly, he was bouncing off the walls and seemed just fine other than an occasional cough.