Mal's been sick pretty much all week.

Laura said she blames the MMR shot she got him 3 weeks before it started, even though we both know the symptoms are all stomach flu. The anti-vaxxers have done their work well: it's tempting to blame the vaccine.

He seems to have gotten mostly over it, but he's still really wiped out. He was awake for 8 hours this morning/afternoon (I think that's the longest stretch since this started), then napped a couple.

I've worked from home the past couple of days, because the bathrooms at work have been broken.

It's been pretty intense work, since I'm behind schedule, and we have our cruise coming up in just a week.

I finally got a break for lunch around 2 this afternoon. Laura mentioned that she'd like to go out for a walk around the neighborhood. She'd suggested that Mal ride in his stroller, but that didn't appeal to him. So she asked whether I'd be okay with her leaving when I got to a stopping point.

(The fact that she feels like she needs to ask is something we both have to work on, but that's a different story for a different day).

Somewhere around 6:30 [yes, I was still working furiously], she dropped back by to warn me that daylight was burning, so she needed to leave soon.

Mal was sleeping *hard* at that point.

I told her to go ahead. We both figured he'd just stay asleep.

On her way out the door, Carol made a run for it. Laura blocked her, but she gashed open the back of Laura's leg. Laura grabbed a towel to rinse the cat gunk out of the wound. Then she tried to toss the towel in the laundry.

The washer was full of clean clothes. Laura switched gears to move them to the dryer, which was also still full.

She spends a lot of her life dealing with this sort of thing and got frustrated.

I told her to get out of here and promised to take care of it.

Mal woke up about 2 minutes after she left, crying for her.

She was supposed to take him with her. I offered to take him to try to find her.

He was down with that. Except that he didn't want to look at our neighborhood. He wanted to go to the lake instead.

I offered to take him to the lake.

He didn't want to leave.

I started to suggest something else, but he just wagged his finger at me and headed back to his room.

He got upset that I was following him.

I claimed that I was just getting some water to drink and then going to the bathroom.

He was OK with that and started talking before I had a chance to do either (I really was hoping to do both).

He collapsed on his floor and cried. I used some stuffed animals to try to break him out of the cycle. He took the first and threw it away from me. He gestured frantically to keep the second away. He told me to quit having ideas, because nothing could make it better.

Then I grabbed Skye and played her "Grandma loves you, Mal" recording, and that did the trick.

He laughed for about 3 seconds, which was long enough to break the loop.

He cried a little longer after that, but those tears were less "heart broken" and more "getting over it."

Pretty soon after that, he showed me a new Lego set they bought at Wal-Mart earlier. It includes a Powerpuff Girl, with some villain I don't recognize (not that I recognized the hero) and a merry-go-round and slide. And a bunch of other little random pieces that I couldn't figure out. (Laura explained all about them later: he missed all the best parts).

Oh, and there's some kind of music thing with wheels that spin. I figured it was a reel-to-reel boom box.Laura thinks the spinny things are a DJ's turntable.

I'm bowing to her wisdom on this one.