Buried Treasure and a "Hi, Five!"

The last two weeks have seen us sidelined with a few different illnesses passing through this house, starting with pink eye.  All of us have also enjoyed a crazy stomach flu that lasts much longer than 24 hours, and a bad cold and cough.  The girls missed over a week of school!  Taking care of sick kids is one of those not-so-fun things about parenting, and being sick while attempting to take care of the kids is even worse!  I'm very lucky that, while I did get really sick for a few days, it happened to coincide with a 3-day weekend and Matt was on hand to care for the girls.  As I lay on the couch, in my miserable, unmedicated state (one of those pesky drawbacks to being pregnant!), I would periodically wake up to some new "daddy activity" being played out. 

The highlight for the girls was treasure hunting as pirates, with a pirate map and everything.  This was right up Megan's alley since her new favorite show is Disney's "Jake and the Neverland Pirates."  They even dressed up for the game.  This kind of stuff is way more ambitious than anything I do, even when I'm feeling 100%!

The one child who didn't need anything these past few weeks, and who is just beginning to make their presence known with persistent little kicks, is Baby Five.  Kids are certainly a LOT easier in utero :) But, Five did receive a little attention yesterday.  At 19 weeks, we were due for the big anatomy scan, and Five couldn't wait to say "Hi!"  A beautiful heartbeat and lots of movement were reassuring to see after all of our sickness.  There were a few days I only managed to drink water, yet Five miraculously survived, no worse for the wear.. The ultrasound tech had no problem finding a little waving hand,

and some kicking legs.

After a brief hello, though, Five blocked a lot of the tech's nudging with his/her arms up next to their face.  We were looking at these elbows quite a bit.

Most importantly, everything points to Five being completely normal (we'll work on the overachiever part post-birth!),  which is a relief for this mom who is convinced that five healthy kids is too much to ask for!  We're truly blessed to have this little one coming our way, very soon! Oh, and we didn't find out the sex of the baby, obviously.  It will be fun surprise to find out at delivery, and an even bigger surprise if it's a boy.  We'll see!