Pooped Out.

Unfortunately, the flu caught up with Ella this past Sunday morning making her the third person in our family in six days to bite the dust.  Luckily, Ron was home and able to take her to Urgent Care to get tested for Influenza A and also to pick up her Tamiflu prescription at the pharmacy.  If it hadn't been for him, I would have had to drag four kids to the doctor (including a newborn) to take care of all of this.  So, that was a blessing.  But, besides that, everything else about this flu bug raging through our family these past few days has been pretty stressful.  From washing a million loads of towels and bedding to making sure everyone is washing their hands and drying them with paper towels to banning Ron to the basement for days to making sure everyone is taking their antiviral medicine, the list goes on and one.  However, the most stressful of all of these things has been trying to protect baby Emmett from catching this flu.  I have never had a newborn baby come down with the flu before and I have no interest in starting now.  So far, we have been able to keep him away from all of the sick members of our family and he hasn't come down with it yet.  Let's hope it stays that way.
But, it appears that I pushed Ella back into her normal life a day or two early today when I found her like this on the stairs this evening.  Although she was the only one to throw up in our family, the flu seemed to hit her the least between Ron, Lia, and Ella.  She never caught an awful cough and seemed to be completely normal and fever free after three days.  As a result, I decided that it was safe to send her off to preschool this morning.  After coming home, I told her she didn't have to take a nap today (like I did on Sunday, Monday, and Tuesday).  Instead, she laid on the couch and watched movies in the afternoon until her older siblings came home from school.  However, after washing all of her bedding and giving Ella her freshly washed blankets this afternoon, she curled up into them on the stairs and promptly fell asleep while I was making dinner.  She has never done this before!  My kids either take naps during the designated afternoon nap time or don't take them at all.  So, it was a total shock to go looking for her (after noticing that she had been too quiet for too long) to find her asleep on the stairs!  It's jut a good thing that she didn't attempt to roll over and go tumbling down the stairs.  Now that would have been one rude awakening!