First snowfall of 2010

Always a hit with the boys. And gone the next day, which is fine with me!

SIX

happy

sweet

busy

MONTHS

Little Crawler

Maddie's not even 6 months old yet and she already gets around better than our boys did at 9 months. I've seen lots of baby techniques...the inch worm, the sniper crawl, etc...but I've never seen a baby get around quite like she does. We're impressed.

Proof that we recovered

The rest of January was much more uneventful than the beginning.

The boys love driving around the yard in the car Santa brought Colin.

Maddie loves being cute. I love how helpful Ethan is.

Run a marathon: Check

Jason ran his first marathon this past weekend at Disney World. He did great! It was sunny (once the sun came up...he started running at 5:40 am!) but freeeeeezing. Twenty degrees with the wind chill from start to finish. It was tough to stay hydrated because the water they were passing out kept freezing, and as he pointed out, "You can't drink ice." I had grand plans of getting lots of pictures at the finish line to document this milestone, but we were all so frozen we left as soon as he finished. Here he is bundled up on the monorail in the coat and blanket I brought him:

As he ran past different check points, I would get a text message on my phone, so I was able to monitor his progress from my warm hotel room while my kids slept. Here are the text messages I got:

@ 5 miles in 00:43:05. Pace: 8:37. Predicted: 3:45:55.

@ 10 miles in 01:25:27. Pace: 8:32. Predicted: 3:44:02.

@ Half in 01:52:40. Pace: 8:35. Predicted: 3:45:20.

@ 20 miles in 02:56:21. Pace: 8:49. Predicted: 3:51:11.

He was well on target to come in under 4 hours. At 21 miles he started to cramp in his right thigh (front and back). He ignored it and just tried to run through it. At 24 miles it completely seized up, and he fell off to the grass area. He thought he was going to have to quit because he couldn't walk on it. Luckily, a medic was right there and spent several minutes massaging it and got him to the point where he could do a slow jog/walk. Here's his official time:

04:04:20. Pace: 9:19.

Not bad for your first marathon! Especially since the kids had been sick all week, we'd all been sharing a hotel room and getting sporadic moments of sleep each night, and walking miles through theme parks while we aired out our infirmary. Jason's torn between being thrilled that he was able to finish and being bummed that he didn't come in under 4 hours. He's mostly thrilled, and ready for the next one.

Here we are that night with our medals (I completed the half marathon the day before).

Fun medals, fun race. If you're looking for a first half marathon, this is a good one. Running up main street and through Cinderella's castle is one of my top 5 favorite things I've done in my life. (Even though it snowed at the start for the first time in the history of the race, and sleeted/rained the rest of the time. I've never been so cold for so long in my whole life!)

The Unhappiest Place on Earth

I think the best way to recap our Disneyworld adventure is through the emails I sent my mom and mother-in-law.

Sunday, January 3, 2010:

Ethan: fever 102.0, no vomiting because we keep giving him Zofran, parked on the couch all day napping on and off.

Not sure we're going....we'll see in the morning!

Monday, January 4, 2010:

Going for it. Still vomiting but no fever or diarrhea. [Note: Colin had been sick one week prior with a 24-hour GI bug, so we thought this was what Ethan had.]

Tuesday, January 5, 2010:

Here's an update of our trip so far, at the end of day 2:

I love Disneyland. Love it. DisneyWorld, not so much. I think I've done something awful to tip the scales in the universe, because we have some seriously bad karma on this trip. Ethan started fever, vomiting, diarrhea on Sunday morning. Since Colin had had the same exact symptoms the week before, we thought it was odd but would be short-lived, so packed anyway. Ethan threw up Monday morning and we got on the plane Monday afternoon. Made it here fine...no one sick on the plane and the kids were great. The luggage was supposed to be brought over by Disney, though they said it would arrive "a few hours" after we did. It arrived, after many angry and frustrated discussions with every front desk employee, bell hop, and manager on duty, SEVEN HOURS after our plane landed. By this time, it was after 10:00 pm and the kids were bathed and in their underwear/diapers, exhausted and cranky and hyper (Colin). Ethan was feeling lousy, fell asleep at 7 on the bed and I had to wake him up to bathe him because he had horrible diarrhea WHILE SLEEPING (poor kid).

At 2:00 I wake up to a gagging sound, and I know immediately that Colin has thrown up all over his pack and play. And himself. I change his pjs and throw a towel down in the crib, but not before he throws up again, a ton, in the bathtub. Ethan sleeps through all of this.

I get Colin back to sleep but he'll only sleep on me, so I'm propped up against the headboard holding him. Every time I try to move him he either vomits some more or wakes up and clings to me. I finally move him next to me some time after 3:00. Jason has moved to the couch by this point.

Madeline is up at 7:30. We feed her and play with her. Colin wakes up at 8:30. Jason gets him dressed and takes him to ride the monorail and buy some breakfast. Madeline's tired and uncomfortable and can't get back to sleep. I finally cajole her back to sleep around 9:30 by laying on my back and draping her, face down, across my chest. We both doze off. Five minutes later, Ethan wakes up...more diarrhea. The black out curtains are drawn, so in the bathroom he asks, "When is it going to be morning?" He can't believe it already is.

I call to make dining reservations and they don't have any record of me in the system, so can't help me (only a Jason Harris married to an Iris Harris who lives on Ivanhoe Road, wherever that is). It takes me 10 minutes to convince the woman that I'm not Iris, only to find out that every restaurant is booked (we were warned about this, but didn't want to tie ourselves down to advance reservations).

I buy amusement park tickets and they charge me for 4 adults, because the front desk person has entered Ethan and Colin as two 10-year-olds, despite the fact that they were standing next to me when I checked in and are clearly not pre-adolescent twins. After 15 minutes and getting a manager involved, they refund my money and charge me a lesser amount for Ethan and nothing for Colin.

It's the coldest day on record in the entire history of Florida. Seriously...we heard it on the news. Next week it's supposed to be 72. Today it was hovering around freezing, with the wind chill. I didn't pack any of my cold weather running gear, and the half marathon starts at 5:40 am (you have to arrive by 4:00 am).

There was no vomiting after breakfast, so we pack the kids up and head to Magic Kingdom. The first ride we go on (Buzz Lightyear) only has a 20 minute wait. When there are only 10 people in line ahead of us, the ride breaks down. Seriously.

We go on 3 rides. Headed to the 4th ride, Ethan announces that he just wants to go back to the hotel because his stomach hurts. Colin and Madeline both fall asleep on the way. Ethan falls asleep shortly after we get back.

Ethan hasn't eaten much of anything for 3 days. At 5:00 tonight we're discussing going out for dinner and he runs to the bathroom, vomiting in the sink while he simultaneously has horrific diarrhea. Jason puts him in the bathtub to clean him off and the bathtub is draining very slowly. Jason starts pulling years of accumulated hair and cigarette butts (?????) from the drain. This is the point where I start gagging and have to run from the room. (The diarrhea on the floor before this? Didn't faze me.)

Oh, and Jason threw out his back working on the preschool playground over the weekend and can't lift any of the kids without causing himself horrific pain...and he's really trying to get better before the marathon.

All 3 kids are running fevers. Ethan's lethargic and bored. Colin's alternatively cute and destructive. Madeline's mostly good natured, though she coughed all night last night, and in the park we have her bundled so tight that only her eyes are showing.

Jason and I are both nauseated, but that may be because our hotel room reeks of vomit and diarrhea.

This has just been ridiculous.

Saturday, January 9, 2010:

I figured I'd send you a summary of the rest of the week...

Wed: Both kids vomiting/diarrhea so Jason and I take turns going for runs to get out of the room for a while. We call our pediatrician, who calls in a prescription for Zofran to a pharmacy here in Orlando who delivers it to the hotel for a $5 fee. We have to leave the room in the afternoon so housekeeping can clear out the trash, towels, and linens, so we pack the boys in the stroller and Maddie in the sling and walk around Epcot. We get back, and while I get Colin and Maddie ready for bed Jason takes Ethan out to the deserted and freezing beach to watch the fireworks at Magic Kingdom. Ethan loves it.

Thurs: Both kids seem better...eating, drinking. Colin drinks a ton of apple juice and then throws it all up, but doesn't throw up again after that. No on-demand movies in the hotel room. Kids are bored, so we're renting movies on iTunes and using a cable to watch them on the TV. It's actually pretty warm (high 50s!) so we bundle up the kids and head over to walk around Animal Kingdom while housekeeping cleans out the room. We take the kids on the safari. They love it. We get back to the room and Ethan has unbelievable diarrhea and vomiting 3 times in a 2-hour period. Just gallons of fluid, it seemed. At this point, I get a headache, achy, chills. We get the kids to sleep by 8:00, and I take Tylenol, turn the heat up to 74, and climb under the covers shivering, expecting to be even worse the next day. I wake up with Maddie at 2:00 and feel shaky and weak but better.

Funny quotes from Thurs: Ethan, while screaming in pain on the toilet, asks, "Why am I peeing out of my butt?? Only girls do that!" and then "What if I peed out of my butt and pooped out of my penis?" Five-year-old boys are so funny.

Fri: Ethan's and Colin's races start at 11:00. Ethan wakes up at 9:00 feeling lousy. He looked awful and was completely listless/lethargic. Won't get out of bed or eat or drink. I'm ready to take him to urgent care for IV fluids. His eyes are totally sunken and he's pale. It was scary. Jason says he totally supports taking him and will stay with Maddie and Colin, but wants to try to re-hydrate him on his own first. I agree to wait as long as Jason's working with him and he doesn't have any more vomiting/diarrhea. We agree that the next bout of diarrhea, he's going in to urgent care. Jason spends hours making him drink every 5 minutes despite him protesting and crying that his stomach hurts and he doesn't want to puke. He doesn't have any more vomiting or diarrhea and over a 6-hour period slowly starts to look better and better. Jason will announce, "Okay, everyone drink!" and everyone in the family has to take a sip of something...Jason: Diet Coke, Ethan: PowerAde, Me: water, Colin: Pedialyte (he's the only one in the family who can stomach the stuff). Colin thinks this non-alcoholic drinking game is hysterical and insists that everyone participate. Colin was totally better by Friday morning. He got it after Ethan and got better earlier.

The only thing I truly, truly regret about this whole trip...the only thing that really breaks my heart...is that Ethan has been training so hard for his first one-mile race, and was so excited to get a medal. He's told so many people about it. And he was just too sick to get out of bed and go do it. I really wanted that for him...that moment of working hard toward something and being so proud. All day we would see kids walking around with their Mickey Mouse medals and Jason and I would just get so sad. But he's only 5, and there's always next year, and I just need to let it go.

By late Friday afternoon, Ethan is feeling great. We head to Magic Kingdom where we ride a couple of rides, then come home and are all in bed by 8:30 since I have my race the next day. Jason has a really, really rough night with the kids (Colin and Madeline).

Funny quotes from Friday: Jason left mid-day to go pick up his race packet. While he was gone, Ethan refused to drink anything at all. I told him I thought we were going to have to go the doctor. He cried and said, "Dad's a doctor, why can't he just take care of me? I don't want a real doctor! I don't want shots or needles!!" Apparently Jason's just a quasi-doctor (at least at home). Not sure if that's a compliment or an insult.

In discussing which ride to go on, I suggest "It's a Small World", which I've previously described to Ethan. Ethan says, "I don't want to go on that. It sounds boring. It's just a slow boat with a bunch of singing people." We tell him he has to go on it, and it ends up being Colin's favorite ride...everything else he's found terrifying (even riding the monorail at first).

Sat: I get up at 3:15 am for my run. I'm not feeling great so I take Zofran and 3 Advil, eat oatmeal, drink 20 oz of PowerAde and head out the door. It's 31 degrees. I have a 30 minute ride to the start at Epcot and arrive at 4:00 am. My race doesn't start until 6:20, but you have to be on the bus/monorail by 4:00 and I didn't want to miss it. As I'm walking toward the race, a volunteer is yelling, "Go back to bed!" and "Welcome to Disney Alaska!" I huddle in a tent with some other runners for an hour, run to the PortaPotty, then over to my corral. I get to my corral an hour before my race starts. It's snowing/sleeting by now. The first time in the history of the DisneyWorld marathon that it's ever snowed. I don't think I can adequately describe how incredibly cold I was standing there for that hour. It was awful. I had on a thin warm weather running top, a $10 cheap flannel jacket from Target, and a Disney poncho, along with my warm-weather running leggings. No hat or scarf. I did have some gloves I picked up at Epcot. It was so, so, so cold. When I cross the starting line, more than nervous or excited, I'm overwhelmingly relieved that I get to start running to warm up. I ditch the poncho by mile 1 and the jacket by 1.5, because the snow isn't too bad and I'm warming up. As the sun comes up, the snow flurries change to icy sleet, then rain, and after mile 3, we're running in a more exposed area with a cold wind. It was SO AWFUL. We entered Magic Kingdom at mile 5, and running down Main Street and through Cinderella's Castle was a truly cool experience. I loved it. We then ran back to Epcot, around the golf ball and to the finish line. Most of the time (the first 7 or 8 miles) you're running a stream of thousands of people so your pace is pretty forced. Between that and not feeling great, and not getting a ton of sleep all week, and not having a lot of time to train after taking 10 months off for pregnancy and a broken foot, I ran realllllly slow. Much slower than my first half-marathon. But I did it, and I'm glad. When I finished, it was 28 degrees with the wind chill. I decided to take the bus back to the resort, and happened to get on the only bus without heat, which then got stuck in traffic for 45 minutes. It was so awful. I've never been so cold. Jason and the kids were waiting for me at the front of the resort with hot chocolate. I wanted to get a picture of me with the kids, but I forgot, and later Jason said I looked "miserable" (which I think means I looked awful...my hair was soaking wet, my nose was red and I was shivering). I spent 20 mins in the shower trying to warm up, ate some lunch and crawled under the covers, where I took a 2-hour nap. Maddie stayed and napped with me while Jason and the boys tackled Epcot, which was a disaster. He took them on "Honey I Shrunk the Audience". Colin totally freaked out so Jason had to leave with him, then Ethan freaked out and didn't want to be in there alone, then Ethan cried because he wanted to go back in and see the rest of it. Jason gave up (understandably) and brought them back. He went out to buy some warm weather gear while the kids and I watched a movie, then we all went out for a pre-race dinner. They were all in bed before 9:00, since Jason's got his run in the morning, and I'm trying to wear myself out since I took a 2-hour (much needed) nap.

We're coming back next year so that we can redeem this experience. It can only get better. Better weather. Older (potentially easier) kids. Healthy family. It will all be worth it if Jason's marathon goes well in the morning. Fingers crossed!

Colin was convinced the soap in the bathroom was a cookie. He would not let up about it until I finally told him he could taste it. It did NOT taste like a cookie. Jason did end up running the marathon, and did great. Everyone was completely well Saturday afternoon, so we spent what little time we had left at Magic Kingdom. I made arrangements for a character breakfast at Chef Mickey's on Sunday morning before we had to leave for the airport at 9:00 am. We had to be on the first monorail (7 am), so dragged the kids out of bed, packed, and headed up there. It never came. At 7:30 they finally announced that the monorail tracks were frozen and they didn't know how to handle it. Luckily the character breakfast at our hotel had openings (I'm guessing since no one else could get on the monorail either). The kids had one final fun breakfast before we headed home...very relieved to be leaving.