Birthday Blues! **Not for the faint of heart or queasy stomach!

A few days ago we "celebrated" Brandon's 28th birthday. I know, you are probably thinking, "This girl posted 3 entries about her nephew's birthday and is 2 days late even mentioning her husband's birthday!!"

Here's the reason for my delay...

Sunday, November 18th was going to be a BUSY day at the Miles house. It was not only a Sunday (which is busy enough), but also Brandon's birthday AND I was scheduled to help hostess a baby shower that afternoon as well.

Well... 12:00 Saturday night/Sunday morning I woke up and had THAT feeling. You know the feeling... the one that's border line sick... the one that makes you think, "oh no... I can't get sick, not today!" Yep, that's the one.

I said a quick prayer, "God it's Brandon's birthday and you know how much I have to do today... PLEASE oh please don't let me be sick!!!"

1:00 am... SICK! VERY SICK! I crawled (that's pretty much a literal "crawled") back into bed only to hear Chandler coughing. Brandon (who had previously been "helping" me in the bathroom... my hair is too short to need anyone to hold it back for me!) jumped up and ran to check on her. The next thing I hear is, "Hurry Chandler! Run to the bathroom!!" Yep, she was sick too! Unfortunately we were too late... It was EVERYWHERE! Brandon and I had to strip the sheets off of the guest bed and spot clean the carpet... She has been sleeping in the guest room for about 2 months now because, "[her] bed is not comfy." I got her all cleaned up and put her in my bed.
It was then that I realized that when she went to bed she had PJ pants on... when I found her in the bathroom she didn't have PJ pants on. I asked her where her pants were and she replied, "I took them off because they had frow-up on them." I felt HORRIBLE. Apparently, when Brandon went in to the guest room she was on the floor at the bottom of the bed... best we can figure, she was attempting to get to the bathroom before she got sick and didn't make it so she was trying to clean it up all by herself! POOR BABY!

Brandon decided to leave us sick folk in our room and he went and slept in Chandler's bed in the girls' room. It hadn't been slept in for a while. :)

3:00 am... Same thing all over again! I got sick, crawled back in bed and awoke 10 minutes later to Chandler coughing and throwing up in MY bed! UGH!!! Brandon didn't wake up this time... I cleaned Chandler, got another set of fresh PJs, put the guest bed sheets in the dryer and put my sheets in the washer.... NOW WHERE DO WE SLEEP?!?! We were all out of beds so we went to the sofas. Chandler on the sofa, me on the love seat... makes sense right? since she's so much taller than me? :)
I was a little smarter this time. I put sheets and a towel under her and a beach towel on top of her, just in case.

Neither one of us was keen on the idea of sleeping only to be awaken in a similar fashion so we poped in a Veggie Tales movie (Josh and the Big Wall). I dozed in and out of sleep for the next little while.

5:00 am... Almost the same story... I got sick, Chandler got sick, Brandon woke up and came to check on us. We were able to avoid changing the sheets (thanks to the towel!). Since Brandon was up we wished him a HAPPY BIRTHDAY and gave him his gift. We bought him The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe. Chandler wanted him to watch it with her, but I convinced her to let him go back to bed for a while... it was his birthday after all! We put her back on the sofa with a clean towel. Since she was so sick, Brandon gave her permission to watch it without him. I don't think Chandler or I made it past the first 20 minutes.

Sometime between 5:30 am and 8:00 am Chandler got sick 2 more times... dirty towels were really starting to pile up!

8:00 am... Brandon starts getting sick. Have I mentioned that it was his birthday? We are obviously NOT going to make it to church much less the baby shower. I made the calls that I needed to make: the choir line to tell them not to expect me in the choir and Melanie to tell her that I'm not going to make it to the shower.

8:30 am... We all crashed in the living room.

By this point the only positive thing we've got going for us is that Riley is still sleeping!

She woke up sometime later (I have NO idea when) and was quite pleasant and not as clingy has she has been. Thankfully that meant we didn't have to touch her very much. She spent most of the day in her excer-saucer watching Baby Einstein movies while we laid anywhere that we possibly could... remember all the beds are dirty!

About noon I ran to Walmart to pick up Pedialyte for Chandler. That's the best to avoid dehydration in kids... it's not to bad for grownups either.

Chandler and I avoided what Chandler calls, "the frow-ups" for the rest of the day... Brandon, not so much.

He decided that it would be better to go to Chattanooga, pick up his laptop and work from home on Monday than to get the whole office sick right before Thanksgiving.
About 4:00 he felt a little better so he started getting ready to go... we ate some applesauce (the first solid thing we had had all day) and he got dressed. It was at this moment that Riley decided to get sick!
We took her to the tub and stripped her naked. It wasn't even worth washing the clothes she was wearing... I threw them away! We bathed her and Brandon headed off to Chattanooga.
While he was gone Riley got sick again. Chandler was a real trooper, she helped me get Riley washed, dried and changed without complaining once! She actually even came in the bathroom and said, "what can I do to help, Mom?" I looked at her stunned and then remembered poor Riley and knew I couldn't stop to ponder this transformation long... I had to take advantage of it!

This has been extremely long, but it doesn't even begin to do justice to how incredible LONG the day was!! We kept saying, "Is it still Sunday?"

Riley got sick one more time before bed. I managed to save the clothes that time.

We all slept ok... no middle of the night bathroom dashes.

Monday, Brandon stayed home. I felt better, Chandler felt better, Brandon felt a little better, Riley got sick 3 more times.... That made 6 baths in less than 24 hours!!!

I'm praying that next year for Brandon's birthday we are all sick-free and we can really let him enjoy his day!
Notice that I may not have spared any written details, but I didn't include pictures... you can thank me for that later! :)