26 months 4 days

Day 796. Last night I went to bed at 1:30, since I had already slept in the evening. It was a typical night. Emmy came first, but waited a few hours thankfully, and then Tammy joined us as well. Some time after 7:30 I got up, as Tammy was asking for food, even though Emmy was still asleep on my left, next to Randy. Sammy was up and ready to come out of bed as well. And so I got up, we emptied the dishwasher as always, I made breakfast, and put it on the table. Tammy sat down to eat, and I put Sammy into his chair and started feeding him. Tammy wasn't eating, like most days. I had fed Sammy about three fourth of his meal, when Emmy woke up, and the rest of the boys got up and then joined us at the table. It was somewhere around 8 am. Emmy didn't want to eat either. They both ended up drinking a cereal with fruit drink, which is pretty much what was in their cup anyway.

I brought their medecine to the table, but today Tammy refused to drink it voluntarily all day long. Thankfully she and Sammy are now done with the antibiotics as well. All they still take is the cough sirup, and nose drops.

After dressing them, we went downstairs, where Tammy immediately asks for the Bibles and then sits down on my lap to read it. Sammy sat on my other leg, while Emmy is not as interested most of the time. We had a great time reading Bible stories, and once one was done, she wanted another one. It was only, when Randy arrived with his breakfast that I could get up and leave.

I went upstairs to clean up and then sit down to do office work. It was already after 9:30 am. I worked until 11:15 and went to the kitchen to put curly fries into the oven, then returned to the computer. At 11:45 I put the fish into the pan. At noon the doorbell rang - it was Sonja - just as the kids were coming upstairs to eat.

Unfortunately they were not interested in white fish, but did like the curly fries. Only Sammy ate the fish as well. They didn't eat a lot of fries either, and so they didn't get any puddings today. Emmy drank his cough sirup and got 2c for it. They understand that money has value, but don't understand how much the coins have that I give to them. Emmy was pretty upset, when I dressed him without letting him play in the bathtub. Not having eaten he wasn't dirty, so no reason for it. I was concerned that he once again had a fever. And it was over 39 degrees at one point. It lasted for hours, and by the evening it had gone down considerable. He shouldn't have fever any more! I believe I need to take him back to the doctor.

Sammy fell asleep rather quickly, and I got Emmy to sleep. At 1:45 he woke up again and came running to me. I'm not sure he'd even slept 45 minutes, maybe only 30. I lay down in bed with him, but he kept asking for Sonja, so I took him downstairs and took Tammy upstairs instead, to put her to bed. As is usually the case, she wasn't ready to go to sleep. Randy sat down with her, which usually works better. I returned to my computer, when Sonja suddenly walked in with Emmy. She said that he wanted his Mommy. Given his fever, that didn't surprise me, so I took him and Sonja went back downstairs. But Emmy never went to sleep. He wanted to watch sheep and monkey videos, which I let him, while trying to work right next to him.

Randy had left for the grocery store. Just before 3 pm the doorbell rang, and I went to the door with Emmy to answer it. Sammy woke up because of it, and then Tammy came running as well. All three were up. I called Sonja up who helped get everyone back downstairs. Now it was a special visitor that had ended their nap. Margit had recently contaced me that she would like to fly to Mali with us, had gone through the application process and been approved. She had come all the way from Upper Austria so we could talk about all the details. It's pretty exciting to have such a sweet, retired school teacher fly to Mali with us who had great references. We checked on flights and there was ONE seat left on our flight to Mali. We immediately tried to book it - several times - but something went wrong with the payment. I was able to reserve it for her, and hopefully she can complete the payment within 24 hours. We spent a lot of time with that, but also had fun talking, and she was really sweet with the kids, even though she's used to older kids. I'm glad we got to take this picture with her.

Randy returned and got to meet her as well. She left at about 4:50, and we'll see her again the day before we travel, as she'll spend her last night with us, because of our early morning flight. I was pretty upbeat after she had left. Randy stayed downstairs, while I returned to the computer to work. At 5:30 I started making their dinner, and at 6 pm they came upstairs to eat, since Sonja said they had already tidied up, which meant in today's case that Sonja had done all the tidying up.

Emmy still had a fever, and didn't even want to sit in his chair, so he ended up sitting on Sonja's lap. He didn't want to eat at first either, but then he did eat some strawberries, as Randy had bought some, and they had been asking for strawberries for days. Tammy only ate her soup, but Emmy didn't touch it today. I got the medicine out that Emmy took, but not Tammy. Then they went into the bathtub.

It's always a huge strain for me to hold Sammy in the water to keep him from going under. The new physiotherapist had recommended we'd buy this laundry basket to put into the water, and so we tried it out for the first time tonight. He sat well in it, but it wasn't very stable, as he's such a light-weight. It still made it easier for me to make sure he was alright. The only thing he didn't like was that he wanted to stand to play with the faucet, and so I helped him get up. He had tried to pull himself up on the shower hose, but his arms are not strong enough for that yet.

And of course it didn't take long, before his siblings wanted to get into the basket as well, and before I knew it, all three sat next to each other in it. It's amazing they even fit in there! They had fun, and I love especially the last picture that FB didn't like, claiming it was nudity, even though you can't see anything. They now blocked me for 24 hours, which is why you only get this report tomorrow night.

They ate some more in the water, and then came out. They all got nose drops, and Tammy needed to take her medicine with the syringe again, which was not as dramatic today as it's been in the past. By about 7 pm they were all in bed. Emmy hadn't slept long and was tired, even with his fever having gone down a bit, and so it didn't take long for him to fall asleep. Sammy had slept long in the afternoon, and so it took him a while tonight. He was having fun with his sister, who was wide awake and running around in bed and dancing. So I finally called Randy to take my place, and he was able to calm her down and get her to sleep after a while. As for me, I went back to work, and then got myself something to eat. Now it's about 11 pm, and I feel worse again, but I have yet to clean up before I can go to bed. We're hoping to go back to church tomorrow. Hopefully we'll be well enough.