The Siblinghood of the Traveling Bucket

**update at end of post**

How's Jack? you ask. He's completely and totally, 100%, absolutely fine. The only real surprise about his throwing up last night is that it didn't happen sooner. You see, Josh and I had already named the past few days "The Weekend of the Unhealthiest Sum of Food Our Children Have Ever Eaten".

Let me explain...

Abby, Jack, and their cousin, Brayden, all have birthdays within six weeks of one another. So rather than go to the time and expense of planning individual birthday parties, Bethany and I decided from here on out to opt for one much smaller family gathering. I'm pretty sure I mentioned somewhere in our planning the possibility of just having cake and ice cream and calling it a day.

But you don't know my sister. Telling her to only serve cake and ice cream at a party is like telling me to shoot my next session with a nifty little disposable camera from K-Mart. It's just not gonna happen. Bethany loves the whole preparing, cooking, and decorating aspect of events, and she's really, really good at it. The girl's got a gift, and she knows how to use it.

There was cake (from the little hole-in-the-wall bakery in Gadsden who did mine and Josh's engagement, wedding, first baby, and a handful of birthday cakes to name a few--it's my parent's customary contribution to the festivities), but there were also foods like cookies, brownies, and some cream cheese and crab concoction that I could have eaten until I threw up.

Which brings me back to Jack.

The Lewis kids are born eaters. They rarely meet a food they don't like, and not only do they like to eat, they like to eat a lot! I've had girlfriends ask me how I lose my baby weight so quickly after delivery, and I tell them it's a funny thing -- when you're nursing an infant who's apparently on a 6000-calorie-a-day diet, the weight just seems to vanish. So in true Lewis child form, Jack spent most of Saturday eating. He ate the cake, cookies, brownies, and the CC & C concoction, but he also ate an entire cantaloupe and honey dew melon out of the fruit basket. There are also around 187 alphabets who are sorely missing their 13th letter from all the M&Ms he ate.

We're kind of sticklers about the kids' nutrition, but I'm all about letting them live it up on the occasional special day. But there has to be a limit somewhere, which is why when we saw how much Jack had pounded away at the food table at their birthday party, we cut him off. "You're done, buddy. No more treats today."

If only we had been able to convince everybody else at the party of the end to Jack's feast.

Every time we turned around, he was gladly accepting a goodie from a well-meaning partygoer. The responsibility doesn't lie on them, though, because at one point, I found Jack pulling Brayden's great-grandmother into the kitchen and whispering to her that he would really love a cookie.

Perhaps he has a tapeworm.

Add to that that Sundays are always off-days when it comes to the kids' healthy diets because of church. They've got two opportunities each Sunday during their little classes to eat their weight in goldfish, and they apparently take full advantage of it. So as I mentioned, it came as no surprise to us when Jack's body violently rejected the weekend's quantity as well as quality of food. Let me tell you, I've never seen anything like it.

Enough about that.

Why the Traveling Bucket title, then? Because, unfortunately, Abigail is nursing a temp of over 103 degrees as well as nausea, a headache, sore throat, and chills. Here she is in bed watching home videos from when she was a baby...
...and then trying to keep a popsicle down for lunch.

We're heading to the pediatrician in an hour, so I'll be back with an update on the verdict.

UPDATE:
Part 1 - Abby has swine flu.
Part 2 - Jack's temp was 101.5 when Abby and I got home from the pediatrician. Please pray for the sick ones as they battle the pig nastiness, and please pray for the well ones not to get it.

The pig has struck!!!