Blessings

We've had a week mildly full of sneezing and snot and coughing. Ishy, but not horrid. The "not horrid" part is one of the blessings I encountered this week.  I'm not really used to feeling so blessed in the midst of an illness moving through the whole family, and, honestly, I did not feel very blessed on Tuesday night when sitting in the recliner with a garbage can, tasting blood when I coughed and sure I was going to puke. Thankfully, though, that, so far, was the worst of the effects for the lot of us. Mighty and Miss Mouse are both almost over their snottiness, and I only have a slight cough left.

The biggest blessing this week, though, started with this conversation on Monday night:
Miss Mouse: "I don't feel very well."
Sunny: "I hope I don't get it. I want to be able to take care of you."

Tuesday morning activity began around 7:21 when I saw the light go on in the girls' room. With only one eye open, I noted that they were quiet and dozed back to sleep since I'd been up most of the night with the uncomfortable Mighty Mouse. Well, around 8:05, the girls came hopping into our room, both dressed, and both ready for breakfast. If you know our household well, you know I often have to wrestle (figuratively, anyway) Miss Mouse out of bed and into clothes around 8 a.m. There she was, though, sick and all, dressed and ready for the day!  Dragging my sorry self into the kitchen, I saw Sunny grabbing an apple out of the refrigerator for Miss Mouse's breakfast. I'm not so pathetic as to make a four year old cut up an apple, so I did slice it and split it between the two girls, giving them reheated apple, raisin, vanilla, cinnamon, maple steel-cut oats, as well.  The night before's conversation concluded that morning with this:

Sunny: "I got her dressed this morning. She's kind of like a really big doll, except dolls are harder to dress."
Miss Mouse: "Yes, she got me dressed, so I didn't have to do any work at all!"
Sunny: "Yep. Then I played a game for her (Miss Mouse watched Sunny put together a shape game....apparently Sunny is a full-service caretaker!), and then I read her three books."
Miss Mouse: "Then I pointed to my mouth to do sign language that I was hungry. She understood me, so that's when we came and got you to come into the kitchen."

Yep, so Miss Mouse was even exempt from having to talk. I can't remember the last time I've dressed her or figured out that she was hungry based on the signs she was making, but I'm pretty sure she was around Mighty's age!  It just tickled me to no end how sweet Sunny was to her sickish elder sister. I've been praying that God would perhaps reward Sunny's sweetness by exempting her from our colds, since she often ends up having to do a nebulizer treatment or two, but tonight it seems that Sunny has succumbed to the yuckyness, too.  She was mainly concerned that she make it to dance this week and have the chance to take care of her big sister, so perhaps having done that will help her be content enough to just rest and fight off the bug as quickly as the rest of us have.

It's rewarding - and it's honestly a blessing - to see how kind and caring these children are toward each other. They squabble; they argue; they whine at each other. But at the end of the day, they are best friends.