I Can Do It With a COVID Heart

The trials and tribulations of a sick mom trying to take care of her sick family on vacation.

Wellll well well, we are finally home after 37 days of soaking up the Florida sun, and I just have to ask… What in the actual hayell was I thinking? Someone admit me to the insane asylum. And burn all of my luggage, passports, and anything else travel related so I stop booking these long ass trips. Speaking of ass, mine will not be leaving my house for the next 6 and a half years because the thought of doing anything remotely close to traveling makes me want to barf and die at the same time.

Straight up, if you asked me if I’d rather repeat the travel day we had on our way home or sit in a pit of snakes, cockroaches, and spiders, I would obviously pick to repeat the travel day, but I would SERIOUSLY consider the creature pit.

Let’s just rewind to two Thursdays ago when Margot came down with what I thought was a very dramatic cold. Margot was a preemie and her lungs and immune system have always been more sensitive than the rest of the family’s, so I figured we’d have a few days of drama and snot and move on with our lives. Ohhhh baby, was I wrong.

On Friday, I started feeling crappy, and we were headed to Adam’s family’s beach condo in Navarre on Saturday to spend the week there with his parents, siblings, nieces, and nephews, so I sickeningly packed our stuff and hoped for the best.

But Saturday was even worse. Margot and I were both pretty miserable and River joining the sick club as well. Harper and Adam were holding strong, and I was praying it stayed that way because Adam had to take a super important test for law school on Tuesday morning. That also meant he was studying his butt off while I tried my best to care for everyone while also feeling like I was actually dying.

Sunday… even worse for me. Margot was feeling slightly better, but she had a cough that was keeping us up literally all night. Margot coughs until she pukes. Period. And nighttime is THE WORST. It’s basically us waking up every 30 minutes to help her through a coughing attack and praying it doesn’t end in all of us being covered in throw-up.

At this point, my throat starts feeling like it never has before… knives. Fire. Glass. So much pain (I would take the snake pit over this, me thinks). I woke up on Monday, and it was on the verge of unbearable. Even whispering was painful, and don’t even get me STARTED on swallowing. So I was like, okay, this is 100% strep throat; the three of us started on antibiotics because I had a huge bottle of amoxicillin (that’s another story for another day), and I felt like they were helping but also still wasn’t feeling great. The days continued to go by, and Adam and Harper started feeling terrible as well… so they went to urgent care, and the doc was like, “Yep, this is 100% strep throat. I’m not even going to test you because even if it was negative, I would still give you antibiotics. I’m that sure.”

So everyone is hopped up on antibiotics (and Harper and Adam got an oral steroid), and at this point I’m honestly happy it’s strep since we would no longer be contagious after 24 hours. Everyone was feeling decent except for me — I still had a crippling sore throat and an absolutely incessant cough that I quite literally had no control over. I couldn’t talk, couldn’t eat, couldn’t breathe without coughing. I chalked it up to no sleep and moved on with my stupid hacking life.

Then on Friday morning, I woke up at 4 a.m. to my eyes sealed shut with… goop. My throat was still killing me, my entire body hurt from the coughing, and I was like screw it, I’m going to the emergency room right now. I don’t know what’s going on, but I am beyond miserable.

here I am in the ER with “pink eye” **rolls eyes**

Soooo off I went at 4 a.m., only to be met with the rudest doctor on planet Earth. They swabbed my throat for strep (and the swab was BLOODY from how raw my throat was). I tested negative, and they said, “Welp, nothing we can do, but COVID is going around like crazy down here, so maybe it’s that? Here’s some eye cream for pink eye… BYE.”

I cried all the way back to the condo.

That day, Adam and Harper started going down again. The steroid kept them afloat for a few days, but it was clear the antibiotics didn’t work and that it likely wasn’t ever strep to begin with.

We powered through the next few days with Adam’s family (who I’m praying somehow avoided this sickness; so far, so good), drove back to my mom’s on Sunday to stay the night and flew out of the Pensacola airport on Monday to go home.

Oh, did you think this story is over? It’s not.

Our flight was set to leave at 3:25 p.m. CST and land in Denver at 5:35 p.m. MST. Once we boarded, our captain let us know that air traffic control wanted us to take a different route that would add an hour to the flight time. It’s a 3-hour flight to begin with and now it would be a 4-hour flight. *****heavy sigh***** Have I mentioned the ages of 9-18 months are the most terrible time for a baby to fly? It’s an Olympic sport to keep mobile babies who can’t communicate entertained for long periods of time. I seriously hate it.

Anyway, we now had a 4-hour flight ahead of us, but… dun dun DUN… we didn’t have enough gas in the plane to fly for 4 hours, so now we had to wait for gas. Finally, an hour later, we took off… so we were delayed an hour, and we also had an extra hour of flight time. That means we will have spent 5 hours stuck on the airplane. But there’s nothing we can do, so we buckle up and prepare to entertain River for the next 4 hours.

With only about 30 minutes left until we were set to land in Denver (hallelujah!), our captain popped on the speaker to let us know… there was more bad news. A storm in Denver is preventing us from landing, so we have to circle for about 20 minutes. So we circle and we circle and we circle, and you’re never gonna believe this, but… there was MORE BAD NEWS. Denver has shut down the ground. No taking off, no landing. We need to circle for 45 more minutes… BUT… we don’t have enough gas for that. So our captain let us know we’d be diverting to another airport: Montrose.

MontWHO? At this point… my soul left my body. River had only slept for 30 minutes on the plane. It was well past her bedtime, and she was doing gymnastics in my arms trying to get out of my lap and crawl to the cockpit to punch our pilot in the face. It surprised me zero percent when they told us we would have to stay in our seats on the aircraft once we landed in Montrose (which I discovered is near Telluride, a 5-hour drive from Denver 'cause you best believe we were about to get off that plane, rent a car, and drive home).

These situations kill me because there’s no predictability as far as timing goes. We could be on that runway for one hour or all night. Our captain was calling it a “gas and go,” leading me to believe it would be a quick turnaround. And it was… we sat in Montrose for about an hour, and then we were cleared to land in Denver, which was about 40 minutes away.

When we finally touched the ground in Denver, I seriously considered breaking out into applause. We spent over 6.5 hours sitting on that airplane. It would’ve been crappy if I was traveling alone watching movies, but with 3 exhausted children…it was next-level horrible.

Our gate was OF COURSE the very last one in the terminal. Adam carried River, Harper got in the stroller, and poor Margot had to be a big girl and walk 25 miles through the airport to get to baggage claim. We got our bags, called an Uber, and finally… finally walked in the door at about 10:30 p.m.

We’ve spent the last two days unpacking and still recovering from what we now believe was probably COVID, which is supposedly running rampant in Florida right now… lol classic.

If this situation taught me anything, it’s that… I can do it with a COVID heart.

What I’m Reading

I finished The Middle of the Night while we were at the beach (which was so good, by the way), and I picked back up on Fight Right, a book I talked about a few newsletters ago. They shared a shocking statistic that I genuinely couldn’t believe. It said dual-income couples with children only spend about 35 minutes TOTAL talking to each other each WEEK. That is 5 minutes per day… I showed it to Adam, and he said he thinks we talk even less than that. What a freaking wake-up call. The book goes on to say that keeping each other’s love banks full is an important part of working through conflict when it inevitably arises. Conflict doesn’t go as well when you’re operating from a deficit, which makes total sense. So, I’m trying to talk to Adam more… even if it’s just little conversations here and there that I would normally skip. I have to hold my hand over Margot’s mouth when I do it, but she’ll get used to it eventually…. KIDDING.

What I’m Listening To

All of the It Ends With Us drama on TikTok. I really tried not to get totally wrapped up in all the nitty-gritty details of this, but the reality is… I am me, and that’s not an option.

I’ve always loved Blake Lively for no particular reason except that she’s pretty and she’s friends with Taylor Swift. Honestly, I don’t think she’s a very good actor. And while I’m being honest, I’ll just add that Justin Baldoni has always kind of given me the creeps. I don’t know if he’s actually icky or if I was just disappointed that he was cast as Ryle, so take that for what it’s worth.

Obviously, tons of interviews and articles have surfaced of Blake being a mean girl and Justin making people uncomfortable on set. And I feel like the truth, as boring as it may be, is somewhere in the middle.

I do think there’s something to be said about the fact that Justin was flying completely solo during the press tour. No one, not one single cast mate, joined him. So they’re all “siding” with Blake. Now, is that because she’s “right” or because she and her husband have way more influence in Hollywood?

Because yes, the mean girl energy in that old interview, we all know the one, was extremely off-putting. There’s no getting around that. And word on the street is that Blake can be a bit of a diva to work with. Am I shocked by that? No.

There was probably just a rift of some kind, and it turned into a big giant stinky mess because we’re all freaks and we can’t stay out of people’s business. Have we forgotten about the disappearance of Kate Middleton? We love to turn anything slightly sketchy into complete and total hysteria.

That said, if we never find out what happened on set, it will be added to my list of questions I ask God when I get to Heaven, which is very long and includes topics like, “What happened to JonBenét?” and basically every other unsolved mystery I’ve ever come across.

What I’m Learning as a Mom

Kindergarten is quickly approaching, and everything is slowly but surely coming together as far as curriculum, supplies, and extracurricular activities.

I’ve gotten tons of questions about curriculum, and I want to start by saying 1) on a large scale, I have no clue what I’m doing and 2) Kindergarten is a perfect time to figure it all out! I’m so excited to get into a good family rhythm of learning and playing together 4 days a week. Something I didn’t know about homeschooling was that it’s not an 8-3 type of thing. Especially in kindergarten, most people suggest an hour to an hour and a half a day of actual teaching! We’ll also do lots of school-related activities and integrate what we’re learning into our daily lives, but if the “teaching” part of it intimidates you, you might be looking at less of a time commitment than you think.

So – curriculum:

For reading, we’re using Learn to Read in 100 Easy Lessons. For some psychotic reason, we tried to start this several months ago when I had a newborn, and needless to say, we got through about 4 lessons. So we’re starting again, and I personally know tons of people who have used this book with success.

For math, we’re using the Good and Beautiful K curriculum.

For everything else, we’re using the Treehouse Schoolhouse Nature Study. This is a year-long nature-based curriculum that incorporates almost everything you need for a Kindergarten homeschool curriculum. Science, history, and language arts will all be covered, and there’s a beautiful little booklet for the kiddos as well as a teacher guide to help you teach and walk your kiddos through each lesson.

We’re also enrolling Harper and Margot in Taekwondo because they saw a class going on at the mall, and they’ve both been begging to do it. I honestly laugh out loud thinking about their tiny little bodies kicking and punching the air in baggy white uniforms. We shall see how it goes.

Our schedule will look something like this: On Mondays, I’ll have childcare all day! This will be for work and to prep for the week of homeschooling ahead. Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday will be full-blown homeschool days, and Fridays will be house reset and activity days (still school-centered).

I’m so excited to start and will continue to keep you guys posted!

What I’m Loving

Sharing all my homeschool supplies here!

What I’m Thinking

I’m thinking my life is cuckoo crazy right now… I honestly don’t know how I’m about to do everything that I have to do, but I guess it’ll work out? Not only am I doing the same things I’ve always done: working as a content creator while also staying home with my girls, keeping the house in order, cooking 3 meals a day, and barely keeping my head above. But I’ve also thrown in a weekly newsletter and homeschooling into the mix. What am I thinking though really???

I have no clue if it’s even possible to operate at this capacity. My newsletter has become one of my favorite parts of work, but also I’m not making any money off of it, and I’m not willing to charge my readers $5/month (Substack’s minimum). I also can’t justify spending this much time doing something that isn’t lucrative for me since my time to work is soooo limited. So I’m thinking of making the newsletter bi-weekly for now until I can either figure out how to monetize it in a way that works for me AND you orrrr clone myself. Ultimately, homeschooling is my number one priority moving forward, so just bear with me as I try to figure all of this out!

What are y’all up to?

Fourth Times a Charm:

“Struggled with infertility for yearssssss and had to have meds to conceive each of my 3 kids. Went to the gyno last week and BING BANG BOOM THE WOMAN TELLS ME IM PREGNANT. I did not believe her. She had to repeat herself about 10 times. Drove home and told my husband and he didn’t believe me. I had to repeat myself about 10 times. We are happy, but very confused. Still in shock a week later. My husband says now that I’m fertile I’m no longer allowed to touch him 🤣 He says that he’ll get me “double pregnant” if we have sex. CLEARLY overestimating the power of his swimmers. (He knows this isn’t possible, but I think it’s still made him actually apprehensive lol). Honey sweetie baby, that is not how this works 🤣 Love him, love this baby, vvvv excited”

CONGRATS, MAMA! What a huge blessing for you and your family. I absolutely love stories of natural conception after struggling with infertility! Praying for you, your fam and your new little babe <3

Royal Romps?

“I am from South Africa and back in the day Prince Harry used to travel here a lot to play polo to raise money for his charity. One of my best friends is a wow/10 and used to work for a modeling company. They would ask her to “waiter” at these events, aka keep the rich people happy.

So back in 2015 at one of these massive charity events, he was there. What a flirt! I obviously didn’t meet him but my friend did.

More than once.

And every time he would end the night with the pretty models handing out shots.

And every time he would "walk someone to their car” if you know what I mean.

One of the models lived in the estates the polo events were at and he dropped her off at her home and they definitely made out.

My model friend drew a line but he did get her number to let her know when he was in South Africa again. A royal. Casually handing out his number to a beautiful civilian.

He is for sure the naughty brother and I can see why he parted with the royals.”

This surprises me 0% — did any of you guys ever read Crazy Days and Nights, the blind item blog back in the day? I was obsessed. And I once read a blind item about Harry and Meghan that said they actually met on a yacht because Meghan was a yacht girl (similar to the “waiter” mentioned above). Apparently her and Priyanka Chopra both used to yacht it up with the rich and famous back in the day. Meghan ended up with Harry and Priyanka ended up with…Nick Jonas. Still can’t quite wrap my head around that one.

Okay, that’s all for now! I’ll circle back in two weeks hopefully with a lot less personal drama to report. Until next time!

Xo,

Addi