and Sunday, and Tuesday.  It has been an insane few days.  In fact, I have a very sweet, but feverish, little boy asleep on my lap.  This may be a result of some of Sunday's activities, but  I better start at the beginning . . .

Sunday is always pretty crazy for me, but even more so on the Sundays that Kevin works.   (It is really hard to do it alone with young children, and my experiences with this have really made me appreciate what my sister Wendy did for years, along with all my friends whose husbands have been deployed.)  This Sunday was made even crazier by the fact that I had a meeting for the hour before church started.  With nobody to watch the kids, I had to bring them along – and although Lily colored quietly, Derek was into everything and everywhere, and so by the time church actually began, I was already exhausted.

The rest of the meetings were good, even though they were hard with Derek, since I did sharing time and conducted for Primary.  I experimented with my new best friend, the "Harness Buddy," and it actually made everything much easier!!  Derek thought he was free, I didn't have to hold all 23 pounds of him for 3 hours, and he couldn't run away.  (Except for the one time I took it off during the sacrament prayer, and he ran up to the pulpit before I could catch him.) 

 The hardest part of the whole day was getting to the car.  I had a huge vase of roses I had used for a visual aid, my church bag, mine and Derek's coats – which I never managed to get on either of us, even though it was cold, and some other random stuff.  Lily kept disappearing on me as I tried to get outside, so I decided to just go for the car since we were all together. 

It was then I realized that my keys were in my coat pocket, and I had no idea how to get them with the flowers still in my hands.  The wind was blowing so strong, that I couldn't set them on the car, and so I chose to wedge the vase in the crook of my arm.  Just then, Derek – who was still attached to his harness (AKA: leash), tripped and fell by my feet, throwing me just enough off balance to send freezing cold water from the vase pouring down on his head.  So there I was, still in the same predicament, but now with a screaming and soaked baby – all the time praying Lily would not run into the parking lot chasing her picture that kept blowing away in the wind.  By some miracle, we made it home and into the apartment, but what a day!

And so I am pretty sure that Derek's fever is a direct result of the incident on Sunday.  It appeared yesterday afternoon, and he was up last night from 1am – 4:15ish.  Today he was tired and whiny, so we spent most of the afternoon on the couch watching Backyardigans to help him feel better.  We had the missionaries for dinner, and so Kevin was able to give the poor boy a blessing.  He'll be fine, but these are definitely the harder days of parenthood.  And hey, it could be so much worse, that I am counting my blessings :).