the state of things.

So I feel like this past week was the longest ever. I distinctly remember thinking on Tuesday, 'it has to be at least Thursday.'

We're tired here, and the boys (Chris included) are sick, all with their own afflictions. Chris has a cough,


Ryan has green eye boogers (no abridged version of that one, sorry),



and Ben has sinusitis and tonsillitis.


Ben and I were supposed to go to Johnson's Farm with his school on Friday, but Thursday afternoon he came down with a 100* fever. Not a huge deal but he just wasn't himself. I made an appointment for Friday morning (that's him above in the waiting room), and the doctor asked us a whole bunch of questions. She asked whether Ben has allergies, because in addition to the fever he'd had a cough for about a week. I hadn't brought him in yet because I was just kind of waiting for it to pass - there's nothing like paying your copay for the doctor to tell you that there's nothing that can be done to make your child feel better.

The doctor looked at Ben's ears, which aren't infected. He didn't have a fever that morning, but she did have me pin him down on the exam table so she could look at his throat. "Oh wow," she said. "His tonsils are kissing." She wrote a bunch of things down in his chart.

And so I hadn't heard that term before, but I assumed it meant that they were swollen. But google it! Kissing tonsils are really disgusting looking! (Sorry, I couldn't help myself. Chris is squeamish but I love medical stuff.)

When I was about 4 I had to have my tonsils and adenoids removed. I was always getting sick, but afterwards I was relatively healthy except for my weekly allergy shots. And after the surgery I didn't snore anymore. I'm starting to wonder if Ben is taking after me.

I also mentioned to her that he snores really loudly, and there are times when I've been around him while he's sleeping (both in the car and when he sneaks into our room at night to sleep), and I've heard what sound like episodes of apnea. He'll snore loudly, and his inhalation will be really labored - and sometimes he tries to get air but can't. So far he's always woken himself up briefly to breathe, but it's pretty frightening.

So. She prescribed a nebulizer and an antibiotic for the cough and the tonsils, but she also wants Ben to see an ENT and have a sleep study done. Poor kid. I'm not sure when that will happen but I'll put it on his bucket list... says the mother who still hasn't had her son's teeth pulled when they were supposed to be pulled in JUNE. But I digress.

Below, a picture of Ben playing at Mom-Mom & Pop-Pop's house. The blocks he's playing with are actually ones that Chris, Kelly & Brian played with when they were little. He loves them!