Mothering is a Marathon...

...Made up of 1,000 sprints a day.

Sprint to get through breakfast.
Sprint to get him dressed while he's in a good mood.
Sprint to make lunch before he changes his mind about what he has FINALLY decided he will eat.
Sprint to get the paints/Play-Doh/game board/train tracks set-up before he's screaming that he wants something else moved on to the next activity.
Sprint to make dinner while he's occupied (or in front of a handily recorded episode of Clifford on the DVR).
Sprint to make it through a laundry list of errands before the snacks and his patience run out.

You get the idea. (Whew, can you pass the Gatorade?)

This last week-plus, however, we've been dealing with the mysterious fever that resulted in a Saturday morning visit to the pediatrician (thank you for Saturday hours, Dr. W!), which finally disappeared Saturday night/Sunday morning just in time for mommy to come down with a cold just in time for peanut to come down with the same cold by Monday afternoon.

Two boxes of Kleenex later and I feel like I've been running a non-stop temperature checking, soothing, nose-wiping, "cover-your-mouth-when-cough," pass the saline spray, turn off the swine flu news marathon. We're still not 100 percent yet (and I'm just holding my breath that the hubby doesn't get it next), but I'm seeing enough light at the end of the tunnel to know I really need the sunlight and fresh air at the other end of it.

So pardon my absence. I'm noodling lots of things I want to write about, and will, once I get off this sneezing, germ-killing, activity hopping hamster wheel.

Of course, by then we'll just be onto the next leg of this mothering marathon. As long as it has a better view than the inside of a Kleenex box, I think we'll be doing okay.