No One Likes a Mr. Sniffles

Name that movie! Ten points if you get it.

So Brent came home a couple of weeks ago with a tickle in his throat. This is how it usually goes: Brent feels a tickle. He takes tons of vitamin C. Tickle goes away. Two days later Maren is hacking and coughing and dripping mucous and aching and complaining and shivering and sweating. This lasts for about two weeks. Then I just have minor amounts of coughing and mucous for another two weeks.

This time the baby got sick too. She didn't get it bad, just had a mild fever for a couple of days and has been a bit congested. Even when her face is covered in crusties she is still adorable. How does she do it? If I allow myself to get covered in crusties I can't believe how disgusting I am. But slap those nasties on an infant, and oh aren't they adorable?

So the last couple of nights the baby has finally started sleeping well again. (During her illness she was waking up every 1.5 - 2 hours. Just like a newborn! Not fun.) Also the last couple of nights I have been able to breathe through my nose without difficulty. Now that may sound like not a big deal, but to me it is. If I can't breathe through my nose with ease then I cannot sleep. At all. I still woke up every couple of hours, because that is my lot in life it seems, and every time I marveled at how comfortably I could breathe and consequently sleep. I felt like singing praises!

Praying in gratitude for unencumbered breathing may sound weird to you, but I've been doing it quite a lot lately. It is such a small thing but I am so grateful for it. You Rasmussens out there ought to understand what I mean; we all go through about a box of kleenex a day. Which brings me to another thing I'm thankful for: tissues with lotion. This has got to be one of my all-time favourite inventions. Those of you out there who know how often I blow my nose will be able to imagine why tissues with lotion are so important to me. No raw, dry, peeling skin! Time to sing praises again! Such small things that make my life so much better.

That's probably a good lesson for us all to learn. There are so many small things that make our lives so good, and yet we take them for granted. Hmm. I may have to ponder this for a while and come up with a list of seemingly insignificant things that we all ought to be grateful for. Any suggestions to get me started?