Burnination

Last night the little girl was only sleeping fitfully while her mother and I were still up and about; she would cry a little, then settle back down for a while on her own, then cry a little, settle, and so on. By the time we did retire to the bedroom, my wife decided it was worth getting the little girl out of her crib to take her temperature and see if she was legitimately under the weather. She was, and then some, with a fever up over 102, although the thermometer reading and her minorly interrupted sleep were really the only symptoms.

Of course that means a 24 hour prohibition from going to daycare, and once again timing is everything as Thanksgiving's expanse across Thursday and Friday meant that Tuesday was going to be the only day either of the kids would be headed to daycare. And Tuesday also happens to be my wife's last day of instruction with her students before their last exam of the module, so it was immediately apparent that I would be the one staying home for the sick day. I turned my alarm off straightaway.

And it was a good thing I did, because after getting some infant fever-reducer and spending some time lazing in mommy and daddy's bed, the little girl was returned to her crib but still had a very difficult time falling asleep, now accompanied by even more crying. And once we finally got her down for the count, it was only a very short span until the little guy woke up and decided he'd rather sleep in mommy and daddy's bed, right around 3 in the morning. (It should be noted that these were completely independent developments, not a case of the sick toddler's crying waking up her older brother and creating a new set of complications. Just one of those nights.) Between tossing and turning, twitching and thrashing, and a fair amount of coughing, the little guy kept both my wife and me awake for a while until I carried him back to his own bed. I fully expected a weapons-grade tantrum, and in hopes of neutralizing it I offered to lay down with him in his bed for a little while, and miraculously, that worked. A short while later I took my leave and crawled back into my side of my own bed, and caught another couple hours of sleep. But, again, if the alarm had gone off, it would have been minutes, not hours, so that was a plus.

So my wife bravely soldiered off to work this morning and I got the little guy off to daycare and returned home with his still-pajama'd sister, and we've been having a nice low-key day. The unexpected downtime also has the benefit of giving me time to work on some financial paperwork for the short sale of my old townhouse, which is something we are definitely doing! We met with our realtor last night, the tenants are moving out on the last day of this month, and things are moving along. The short sale is a net positive in that it's going to make our household budgetary situation a lot more manageable once that mortgage payment goes away, but it's not exactly the ideal way of getting there. Of course, waiting patiently for the housing market to not only recover but resume its formerly inflated price structure isn't ideal for us either, which is how we got here to begin with. Time to just let ideal go its merry, elusive way and move on, I suppose.