Sunday, March 05, 2006

Busy, busy, busy: attempt #1,000,000

I know it's been nearly a month since my last post but things here have been stressful. We went on a mini beach vacation to an island off the southern coast of Iran, which was great except that the last day of vacation Mustafa came down with chicken pox (thanks to 4 kids in his class which we found out about the night we left on the trip) and Safiya came down with the flu. The flu ended up getting passed to everyone except chicken pox boy, who was kind enough to share his chicken pox with his baby brother and two sisters. So, basically, I've spent a little more than 3 weeks tending multiple sick children at various stages of illness. Oddly enough, the two youngest got it the worst. My poor baby boy got hit with major chicken pox all over his bottom (well over a hundred at the peak) and his head and face. The worst one hit, though, was Zahra. The poor girl was absolutely covered from head to foot with spots that hurt every time you tried to touch her or change here clothes and all of this was accompanied by a feaver for about 2 days. (She was the only one to get a fever.) At her peak, she easily had well over 1000 spots. This may sound like an exaggeration but she had 13 on her left ear alone and that was one of the least hit areas of her head. She even managed to get some on the palms of her hands and between her fingers. We made 3 trips to the pediatrician and 2 trips to eye doctors in two weeks. The eye doctors were for Reza and Zahra. Apparently, it's dangerous to get chicken pox around the eyes and both of them managed to get them right along their eyelashes. My guess is that Zahra was on antibiotics for a mild ear infection because of the flu which reduced her normal bacterial flora and gave the varicella plenty of space to reproduce and really dig in. Safiya got hit a day or so later than Zahra but she's further along in her recovery and she didn't get nearly as many spots, although to hear her you'd never know it. Safiya has this awful habit of crying out "momma" multiple times in less than a minute and in a pitch that suggests that she is in mortal peril anytime she wants to tell you something when she's sick. Since the flu also hit Mohsen and me (thankfully it was really only tough for me for about a day), I've been pretty stressed out.

To compensate for the stress and since I normally need a good bit of time to myself to maintain my sanity, over the last 4 days, I've spent a good bit of time cruising around reading quilters' blogs. There are some amazing women out there and the amount of work they get done is phenomenal. I've just now finished the quilting on Zahra's 1st birthday quilt and she's 4 1/2. Granted, I've finished 2 other quilts, had a baby and finished by B.A. during that time but still. I started quilting about 8 years ago and finished maybe one quilt a year. There are women out there that do 4 in a month! I'm also a bit envious of the space they have to work in. Right now, my stash lives in the back of a closet in the suitcase I brought it here in.

Where there's envy, there's also inspiration. Tonight while searching through my stash for the fabric to bind Zahra's quilt, I pulled out fabrics for three mini quilts I want to do. Thanks to Tonya at Lazy Gal Quilting, I'm dying to try a wonky house or two which, after I finish projects that MUST get done, I want to expand into a wonky house growth chart for the kids. I managed to forget to pack the growth chart that I had for them since Mustafa was two years old. The kids loved being able to see how much they'd grown so I guess we'll have to start all over again. Besides that one, I want to try two mini/micro quilts like the bow ties and churn dash examples on Sandra's Snippets. I can't wait to get started but I promised Zahra that I'd finish her quilt first. She was so excited when I finished the quilting tonight that she asked me to put it on her bed tonight. She was a bit disappointed when I explained that I still have to cover up all of the edges. She's so optimistic that she thinks I'll have it done tomorrow which is easier said than done since I'm doing it all by hand.

I guess that's my cue to get off-line and get busy on that binding.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Good on you Shellie! There's nothing like fossicking around your stash, cutting bits and bobs and flicking through quilty mags for destressing! I rank it right up there with shoulder rubs and hair brushing (which I pay the kids to do LOL). I remember my lot getting the pox too - we had 6 weeks of it as one after the other got it. We only had 4 children at the time and the 6 month old got it too, but luckily quite mildly. Hang in there! Can you get Calomine lotion? It's pink and smelly but great for the itches! I hope they all get better real soon and happy quilting :-)

Tonya Ricucci said...

Wonky houses growth chart sounds like a lot of fun. I hope you enjoy making the houses and if you have any questions, just let me know. Hope all the family is doing better now.