A Different Kind of New Years...

It is 7:30pm on New Years Eve and everyone in my house is asleep INCLUDING the dog. 

We had high hopes for tonight; a meticulously planned dinner party with oysters, champagne tastings and midnight poutine bar with some of our very favourite couples.  We had hyped up the sleepovers for the kids, made convoluted plans to have the dog appropriately fed and toileted, and even  had the trampoline place rented for post festivities child-minding while we nursed our hangovers the next morning.

And then Toby got gastro.

My boy doesn’t do anything half-heartedly.  While some people feel sick, barf, and are done with it, Toby not only chooses a momentous day (last year it was Halloween) but also allows the bug to completely take over his body and mind.  Rob found him wandering the basement delivering puddles of vomit to unsuspecting places just after midnight.  He then proceeded to replicate his wandering shenanigans 4 more times before daybreak.  By the time it was morning Rob had done 3 loads of laundry, showered himself and Toby and Lysol-disinfected the basement and his room twice.  All while I was sleeping.  (I married a good man.)

Mia, on the other hand, woke up with some diarrhea neatly tucked into her diaper and that was the end of it.

Needless to say, my heart went out to my two boys today.  We cancelled our evening plans and had a pajama and movie day, trading our lavish dinner for beef broth, saltines and ginger ale with a whiff of zofran on the side.

I am sitting here alone by the fire while everyone else sleeps (Rob PROMISES he will wake up in an hour to make dinner with me and usher in the new year…we shall see!) and I’m feeling surprisingly grateful for this rare moment of solitude in which to reflect on our year.

I think the feeling that I have right now – which I have every time Toby gets sick (in his own dramatic way) is that of gratitude.  Seeing your child sick and then bouncing back to health is a little reminder of how precious and full of life they are, yet how vulnerable they can be at times.

In a lot of ways this is the predominant feeling I get when I reflect back on 2013.  Rob had his big car crash in May (he was fine but his car was not) and finished off the year by hacking his 2^nd finger up with an axe on Christmas Eve.  Both events were DEVASTATING to Rob but after decompressing (!) he came around to realizing how fortunate we are.  Both events left us feeling thankful that Rob and the others were unscathed and that all 10 fingers are securely in place.  It also reminded us of the amazing friends we have in our lives. We have several lawyer friends who jumped in to give us hours of free advice and are still walking us through the process.  We have doctor friends who arrived on Xmas eve to sew up Rob’s finger and reattach his fingernail, which has since proven to be but a decorative ornament on his now grotesque finger.

Toby’s year was highlighted by sports.  This year Rob coached Toby’s soccer team and I think for the rest of our lives we will forever refer to it as The Dream Team.  It just so happened that all the boys on his team were his best friends from class PLUS his best buddy from daycare, Connor.  The boys had SO much fun all summer long meeting on Saturday mornings to play soccer together and were undefeated this season which only served to rile up Toby’s soccer ego and enthusiasm.  As winter rolled in we were fortunate enough to find adequate replacement with hockey.  Although this team is missing his very best buddies, it has finally allowed him to make friends with some of the local kids and parents in Feversham and Singhampton.  He played his first game on Dec 23^rd and they lost 18-5, which quite quickly mitigated his feelings of invincibility from his summer of undefeated soccer.

Miss Mia has continued to live up to her middle name; she reminds me more and more of my Grandma as she unveils her mischievous and fun personality.  She has SUCH a sweet tooth, whenever she devilishly tucks in to a particularly delectable treat, hiding it away from the rest of us; I swear I catch a glimpse of my Grandma in her flickering eyes.   Mia has also started to show us her softer more maternal side. She has about 6 babies who sleep with her every night.  She talks to them as she falls asleep and as soon as she wakes up.  When I go in to get her every morning I find her rocking one of them, singing a song, patting their back or just reassuring them “there, there, baby, there there”.  It is great to see that there’s another side to my rough and tumble girl.

My fire is starting to dwindle and if I have any hope at all of salvaging my evening I must go and wake Rob up so we can do our NYE quiz and make some dinner.

I am signing off this year with feelings of good fortune, good friends, and hopefully no ominous rumblings in my tummy…I wish you and yours all the same.