Sometimes you just need your Mommy.

I have had to take a break from writing due to an illness in my family.  Usually when Chris or one of the kids is sick I do my best to make them feel better.  The problem was that the sick person was me.   Last Monday I went to work with a tiny bit of a sore throat.  By 1:00 I started getting warm... you know the warm when you start asking everyone around you if they are hot too?  I had to stay home from work on Tuesday, went to the Dr. and I was diagnosed with Strep throat. 

Wednesdays I work at home, I was so sick I had to call off from work even when I can work in my PJs.  That is when it I knew it was bad.  Real bad.  I called to let my Mom know how terrible I was feeling, and that I was not any better.  A real whine fest.  When I asked her what she was doing she told me she was making cookies for me and bringing them up to me.   She made me homemade chicken noodle soup, homemade bread, and my favorite chocolate chip cookies.  This was accompanied with the mandatory 7-UP and saltines crackers.    There is nothing better than having your Mommy take care of you when your sick.  The only thing that is up there is having your Mommy take care of YOUR kids when you are sick.  She got Jiggy off the bus and walked down to pick up Grady from the sitters.  

My mom is literally one of my most favorite people in the world.  She does so much for her kids and grand kids.  Jacob absolutely adores her and his face lights up with such a pure love when he sees her, he always yells, Grandma and races to give her a hug.    She comes to his hockey games, school parties, performances, the works.  The fact that she adores my kids *she is obsessed with the Grady Baby too but he does not do much in the activity area, just makes me love her more.

This is not the first time that she has dropped whatever she is doing to come take care of me when I am sick.   My mom will always come to my rescue whether it be to help decorate the house or take care of my boys.

So being sick made me once again truly appreciate my mom and the fact that God has blessed me with her and her silly sense of humor, outgoing nature, and a flair for the dramatic.  Once when I was bed ridden with a foot injury and all my friends were going out dancing she read me an entire day by day motivation calendar as if she was a very emphatic preacher.   Picture my mom, but with a voice that sounded like Martin Luther King Jr. or another famous orator.  It cheered me up and made me giggle so hard I forgot about being disappointed for little bit.  

If I was sad or hurt, she was the first person to try to cheer me up.  She is always on my side, but not afraid to tell me when I am wrong. 

She has a knack for getting meaningful gifts for everybody, not just me.  I remember at my wedding shower I started crying and no one knew why I would be crying over an engraved cake server and knife.  They did not see that they had been engraved with little sayings from my pets.  My beloved pets.  I mean if they can talk they can order gifts right?  By the way, they had weird voices too.   One of my most favorite, gifts was made by my mom and my Pat for my birthday just this past year when I turned 29. (Ahem 34)   They made a slide show of my life and set it to music.  It stopped when I married Chris or they "gave me away".  However, as you can tell by this post and many other posts they never really got rid of me, they gained a son and two grandsons.  It makes me cry every time I watch it. 
Trying to figure out positive things about being sick is pretty hard.  It did make me settle down and rest.  It made me appreciate my husband for allowing me to be off duty when he took care of the boys every night when he got home from work. Usually we take turns.  He offered and did not even complain.  I did hear a lot of spraying going on and have not kissed him in a week.  So far Chris and Jake have been spared.  Grady was unlucky.  Poor kid.
Being sick also made me appreciate being generally a healthy person.  I still have pain when I swallow and I am quite certain that this is some alien form of Strep that is uncommonly painfully .. or maybe I am just being a bit dramatic.  What can I say,  I learned it from my mom.