Homesteading Mama: Things you don't want to hear at 3:30 in the morning

Don't let this innocent ball of fluff fool you. He is NOT innocent.

Let me back up.

We have a new puppy because, goodness knows I needed that like about as much as a hole in the head. 

Weather is getting colder so new puppy has been sleeping inside. I decided to give Arabelle and new puppy our under-the-stairs kennel as pictured here:  

I didn't include three dogs in the kennel because I figured the dynamics would be better with just two. I thought Ritter might be old enough to just "be out" in the house. (I'm very cautious about leaving dogs out unattended in their younger years.)

Four nights ago, I found out I was wrong. At 3:30 in the morning, Hannah came downstairs to tell me Ritter had pooped in her room. I went upstairs to see that he did much more than that. He had the runs in her room. 

So at 3:30 in the morning I am scrubbing the girls' floor. Their carpet of course. Dogs always throw-up and poop on carpet. It's a fact.

The next morning Isaac informed me that Ritter had left the same type of surprise on the carpet in the boys' room. While I was cleaning that up, John discovered Ritter did the same thing in front of the mud room door. (That one seeped into a crack in-between the door and the door tread. Fun stuff.)

Okay so four nights later is last night. Instead of leaving Ritter out, I put him in the laundry room with a wooden gate blocking the door. Arabelle and Raven are in their under-the-stairs kennel, and all is well with the world. 

John is doing two more nights than he was scheduled to, and I am FRIED. As is often the case, everyone is out of sorts when Dad is gone. Especially when he's been gone  a lot and at night and more than expected. The girls were sleeping on the couches because that's what they do when Dad is gone, and I was lying in bed reading as kid after kid after kid came in to tell me "one more thing" or ask me "one more thing" or confess "one more thing" or share what was causing them sadness or what world problem they had solved as they got more and more tired. Right before bed, I actually was laughing at this picture and finding the completely TRUTH in the statement:

I normally go to bed around 9:30pm. For whatever reason, when JB is on nights, I end up staying up to closer to 10 or 10:30. I just can't sleep as well. This particular night, I couldn't sleep AT ALL. (It may have been that I have FOUR books, I am currently in love with, and was actually rotating reading a chapter in each.) 

Around 11:30, I took a Benadryl just to try and fall asleep. 

I finally drift off and then ...

Around 12:30, Isaac comes into the room. He has a migraine. Poor kid. This happens to him every now and then. If it hits while he is asleep, he often gets behind it. If he starts throwing up, it is often hard to get him to stop because he can't keep any pain or anti-nausea meds down. We really think it has to do with sinuses/allergies. 

Anyways, his head is throbbing, and he is on the verge of throwing up. 

I give him a dissolvable Zofran and get him situated in front of the toilet. As he slides onto the floor he says: "Oh, and Mama? Something smelled funny out there."

Oh no.

I race out of my room and look into the laundry room. There is no Ritter! He is not in the laundry room. Oh, the gate is still up as if he is in there. But he's not. 

I turn around. He's looking at me like this, which is never a good sign:

I can smell what Isaac was talking about, and I immediately start scouring the house trying to find where the odor is coming from. It's like a game of "hotter" and "colder." As I get farther away from the girls' room upstairs, it smells better. The closer I get, the worse the odor is.

I finally head upstairs and into the girls' room and there it is. Diarrhea again right on the SAME SPOT he had don't it on before.

The first time I felt bad for him. Poor dog had a belly ache and no idea where he could go to the bathroom. This time I don't. This time I'm mad. I go back downstairs. Isaac is yelling for me from the bathroom because the nausea is getting worse. Both girls are awake. And now Arabelle and Raven under the stairs are wide awake and want out to join the party.

I check on Isaac. He's getting sicker. So I call JB. He's at work, and it takes everything in me not to say: "I'm so exhausted! They woke me up!" when he is working overnight. That just wouldn't be appropriate, I know. But I really still want to say it.

John instructs me to give Isaac a different anti-nausea medicine. I do. I leave him by the toilet and go back out to the living room. I resettle both wide-awake daughters and then turn to the dogs.

I decide to let them ALL out to go to the bathroom. 

I do.

Arabelle and Ritter come back immediately after they go, and I put them under the stairs together, resting assured that Ritter can't get out of there, and I won't have to clean up more poop.

Raven, however, decides not to come back.

So now it is nearing the early hours of the morning, and I am running around in my barefeet and long t-shirt dodging playground equipment and items left over form the kids' "store" that they had made, trying to catch a black puppy. My only light is whatever is shining from inside our house. There is NO moon, and I can barely see anything.

I finally catch her, and opt. to put her in her little kennel which we currently have in our bathroom. I return to Isaac. He is feeling a little bit better so I relocate him to the empty side of my bed, and he curls up -- still moaning but hopeful he can make it through the night without throwing up. I put a huge bowl in-between him and I and silently hope I won't have to clean up throw-up sometime in the next five hours before I need to get up to take eggs and chickens to the farmers' market.

He didn't ... praise God.

One thing went right.

I hope ya'll had a better night than I did. Tonight, John is off of work and hopefully our house can flip back into a regular routine. We get very off when he is gone. We are glad to have him back for two days before he returns to work some more days.

Hopefully tonight will be free of any bodily fluids!!!