Hey friends,

It’s Easter Sunday night and I am sitting in bed with my feet up & sipping a cold drink – I’ve just had a soak in a hot bubble bath… Sounds pretty ideal right? Nice and relaxing… What a splendid way to spend an Easter Sunday evening… I really could just leave the post at this and be done with it, but I’ll be honest here and tell you how my Easter Sunday has really gone and why those few basic “self care” things NEEDED to happen.

Let me take you back to Thursday… I woke up to a very odd looking left eye. Like the bottom half my eyeball was blood shot red and it felt swollen… Great. I figured it may have been some random allergy, I had plans to attend an under 8’s day event with LuLu that day and had to get groceries for Good Friday, so it was a busy day – my eye was throbbing in pain but I didn’t have time to deal with it…
In the afternoon we all decide to go to the block to check out the progress on the house and I wanted to stop by the pharmacy and grabbed some eye drops as my eye still wasn’t improving & the pain was very distracting… I spoke to the pharmacist and they told me to go straight to an optometrist because my eye looked very bad… Great. 3:10pm on a Thursday afternoon, before the easter long weekend I had to try and get a last minute appointment in a small town… Thankfully I got an appointment and I was sitting in the waiting room, I get a text from Trent who was waiting in the car for me with the kids and it read; “Have to go home, Tommy has just been sick everywhere”. Here I am freaking out that I can’t race home and console and fix my baby and help clean up, but thankfully Trent is very capable and took care of it all like a champ. I was able to get my eye seen to, get ointment and eye drops… (Turns out a part of my eye was inflamed and started causing another part to deteriorate in a spot… As of Sunday night, it’s doing much better!) 
That night was fairly sleepless as Tommy was unwell and Good Friday was a slow day, just taking care of our little man was our main focus.
(I still got to attend church and then I cooked a delicious dinner of homemade garlic sauce with snapper, rice, prawns, salad and buttered baked potatoes – it all sounds very mismatched but ended up being spot on!) At this point Tommy is on a very bland and simple diet, we couldn’t work out what was going on and continued watching him closely. He was/is acting happy, has energy and is seemingly fine, but randomly is throwing up and it’s not immediately after food or anything… It truly makes no sense…
Saturday rolls around, he only has 3 tiny little spit ups, so I think he must be getting better….
Then….
12:15am Easter Sunday morning… I wake up to warm liquid gushing over my shoulders and chest, I quickly realise it’s my baby, vomiting in his sleep all over me and our bed… I thank God, I honestly said this out loud “thank you for having him beside me right now God”… As I grabbed him and rolled him over so he wouldn’t choke and that’s when he woke up very startled. Thankfully LuLu who was also in the bed was curled up on the other side so she avoided the mess and Trent was working, so I really had to make a survival choice here… I knew to change the sheets I would have to wake LuLu, get her out of bed, turn all the lights on and it would take 5-10 minutes to get everything changed and clean and at this point I was so darn tired & weak I could barely stand… So I just cleaned myself up quickly, changed my top and cleaned Tommy up & threw a towel over the wet sheets… (I have a waterproof protector under my fitted sheet so I knew the mattress would be fine…) Not ideal and sleeping on a towel is something I do not recommend for comfort levels – but you gotta do what you gotta do sometimes…
Trent wasn’t due home for like another 2 hours, so I walked and walked up and down the hallway trying to get my little man to settle, I laid in bed, sat on the couch, trying – I tried everything. He would nod off to sleep and then jolt awake… This continued to around 2am, when Trent finally got home and saved me and of course Tommy snuggled right into Trent and fell asleep…
So how did your Easter Sunday start? That good?
We were all up and out of bed before 6:30am.
We had fun doing the egg hunt and sharing in the excitement of new toys!
But Trent and I were both dead tired and bickered at each other a few times over stupid things and our patience was at an all time low. Then we ended up going to the doctors at 9am to get Tommy checked out… (Doctor also is stumped, hoping it’s a very mild form of gastro or a tummy bug presenting in an odd way… But if he worsens or doesn’t improve by Tuesday tests will be done)
I felt like I was running on total empty, I could barely move. I still had to peg out the bed sheets and then remake our bed and do all the other laundry, do groceries and tidy the house. We have sheets and towels everywhere at the moment to try and save our carpet and furniture if he was to be sick, so the state of my home isn’t making me happy either and add on the stress of having a baby (who is very small naturally so he doesn’t have weight to lose) being randomly & unexplainably sick… I was pretty much a wreck. I hate having my kids sick, it breaks my heart especially when it’s making no sense and I can’t “help”.
But I went home, pegged the laundry out, put another load on, tidied myself up, breastfed Tommy and put him to sleep, left Trent to nap/rest and took LuLu and headed to church… To rejoice in the fact He is risen, to listen to truth and just sit and be still… LuLu coloured quietly beside me as I listened about how loved I am and how great He is. I sat there quietly feeling like I was about to collapse – my bones ached and my body felt so weak, I prayed for strength to make it through the day,  for patience & wisdom, I asked our Lord to highlight some glimmers of joy in our day that at the time I just couldn’t find and prayed for the ability to give myself some grace and stop being so hard on myself…
Now church and prayer isn’t magic, it doesn’t instantly & magically fix things, but I always feel comfort at church & after praying. I know He is there, He loves & cares for me.
As we sung the last song at church LuLu wanted me to hold her, she clung to me, her little hands touching my hair and then holding me tightly, her head resting on my shoulder, she hardly ever does this anymore so I enjoyed every second of it – I savoured that moment and soaked it in. Despite feeling like I was too weak to hold her, I swayed gently and sung about our Lord rising from the dead on this day all those years ago and His love for us. He died to save us from our sins and rose 3 days later to give us eternal life, I felt so thankful for this life even the struggles.
For the rest of the day I powered through (I had to, what I didn’t get done today I would have to do on Monday and Trent was back to work then, so doing it while he was home to help me and stay with the kids made sense…) I got the groceries done, the bed made and the laundry finished and folded & put away… I gave myself some grace – we had ham and cheese toasted sandwiches for dinner, not exactly the roast I had planned.
By 4:45pm everyone was tired and our day was done. I vacuumed the floors like I do every night and quickly mopped them and we tucked our babies in bed. I ran a big hot bath with epsom salts and bubble bath and sunk down into it, snacking on a few Easter eggs, my first for the day & sipping cold water.

Then I had a hot shower and for a moment for my tired body felt better but now that I’m out and sitting here on my bed I can feel my bones aching again and I don’t know why, I really can’t explain it. But as soon as I get run down or not enough sleep – my body starts to crash, my bones aching is usually the first sign. It sucks, so I’ve got a cold drink and I’m venting my heart out to you all trying to relieve the stress and disappointment in myself.

Our Easter morning was still magical, we had an egg hunt and the kids loved their gifts. We spent time with a little friend who lives down the street, watched a movie and we spoke to our loved ones on the phone. We read Easter books and played games, Trent and the kids went for a walk around the block with some neighbours, but the enthusiasm on my end wasn’t to the level I like to give my kids, especially on special holidays. It was more on a survival level. That makes me feel disappointed in myself, but I know I have to give myself grace. I’m running on bare minimum sleep, my health isn’t terrific (working on it) and it’s just been a rough few days. There will be other Easters… There will be… And sometimes I think these rough days are blessings in disguise, they are given to us so we can appreciate the beautifully easy days where life just goes to plan that little bit more and also so I can share these stories – share them to encourage you.
No ones life is always perfect, kids get sick, lack of sleeps brings out the worst in everyone and somedays survival mode is all we can muster – occasionally even on special holidays… And that is ok. It is life.
Giving ourselves grace is vital, finding small ways to recharge with self care is vital and knowing it’s only a bad day/week is vital. This isn’t the story of my everyday, it’s a just a story of few hard days – days I probably won’t even remember in a year or 10! I try to remember this when I am struggling, this day will not be a stand out day, it’ll be a blur of the past, one day. I can chose to highlight what went right today and store that away in my mental memory bank or I can dwell on the negatives. I chose to remember the joy and let the hardships fade away.

Friends I hope somehow this rambling of words that have been typed with half closed eyes (so forgive the poor writing) has encouraged you today. Everyday won’t be magic, but there will be glimmers of joy in every single day. I can promise you that, you may just have to look a little harder.
I hope your Easter has been more easy & relaxing than ours!
Happy Easter.
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I just thought I would add as of Monday morning at 11am we have had no more vomits since that midnight incident. Praying to God, touching wood and everything is crossed our Little Mitty is on the mend. We would appreciate any extra prayers, please. He is still on a very bland and simple diet but if he continues to keep everything down until tomorrow morning I will start reintroducing food. I hope this is the end of this awful & confusing sickness!