Yes, there are many positives of being a large adoptive family. Unfortunately, this week I have been living through one of the negative attributes of a being a large adoptive family. I wrote about Rotavirus going through our family and affecting everyone a couple of weeks ago. This week, it has been the 48-hour flu bug. We kept our granddaughters Saturday night, knowing that earlier in the week, they had the flu. Apparently, they were still contagious. They are 12 months and two, Amigrace, our toddler, is 20 months. Being toddlers, they frequently sampled each other’s sippy cups, as well as giving each other many kisses. Amigrace started vomiting the next night around 2 a.m. It continued every 30 to 45 minutes all night long. Luckily, I am a light sleeper. I grabbed her and ran her to the bathroom every time she started to vomit. She made it to the toilet every time.

The next day, the diarrhea started. Ali’s school called at noon to say her stomach hurt and I needed to come and pick her up because she might vomit. At one o’clock Super Dad called to say that he was leaving work early because he was vomiting. That meant that I had to pick up Lane from college. Now, we had two people vomiting and one with diarrhea, but that wasn’t the end of it.

Today, I woke to a trail of vomit across my bedroom floor. This is because my bedroom has a private (should I say not so private) bathroom. Both Dani, age 10, and Lyn, age 14, had come down with the flu. By noon, Buck, age 13, was vomiting as well. Luckily, mom has not succumbed to the bug yet.

You may understand now why I am writing my blogs so late today. I used a disinfectant to clean and mop the bathrooms and the kitchen. I also added some to the carpet shampooer. I had to shampoo the vomit up off from my bedroom carpet. Then I decided to shampoo the rest of the rooms because sick children were lying all over the place on the carpets.

With a large family, you can expect the “bugs” to spread through the entire family. Which creates a lot of extra laundry and work for the mom.

Photo Credit Julia Fuller 2006