Hot Child in the City and/or Country

Two nights ago, I went upstairs to check on the kids and has I bent over Jaxon to kiss him goodnight for the umteenth time, I knew something was terribly wrong when I could feel the heat rising from his body before my hand was close enough to touch it. His head, chest and back burned my palm, and as I picked up his forty pound body, it lay in my arms completely limp, his normal amount of muscle tone, absent. He wimpered, his eyelids fluttered and he mumbled something about having a tail.

Last night, after bathing the last little bottom and kissing clean baby faces goodnight, after I picked up the last stuck Cheerio from off the floor, I headed upstairs to crash. Within a few hours, just as I was dozing off, we heard the kind of cry that really means something. It wasn't just a wimper, or complaint, it was the kind of cry that made us leap from our bed and run into the room where it was. Jaxon was tossing and turning and crying in that night terror kind of way. His heart was racing and once again his little body burned.

In a few minutes, he had calmed down and having slept and not eaten for 24+ hours, our little guy was hungry. So, while Daddy read him books on the couch,



I did my best to make some Nana hot porridge at 10:53PM.







and despite the look on his face, he actually did eat it and enjoyed those five tasty bites he took.


and I must have done something right because by 11:00, he was wide awake and ready to start playing.



So what does one do with a 4 year old boy in the middle of the night who isn't showing the slightest bit of sleepiness? Well, I did what every mother would do....I took him outside to see our tiny neighbors....








this one looks like a judge, so dignified

and then, having to forgo the sparklers I bought for the 4th, well, we did a little midnight sparkler action as well....





and then we salted a bunch of slugs, but I didn't take any pictures of that...I don't need PETA coming after me with their red paint cans and posters.

So after the untimely death of an abnormally large slug, Jaxon was exhausted and was able to sleep the rest of the night....along with the rest of the family. Today, he's feeling much better, temp staying nicely at 98.8. So, we are fulfilling our Christian calling and spending our Sabbath as it was directed us in the Bible...we are resting.