It was two years ago, nearly to the day, that our 5-year-old coined the term "butt puke" to describe diarrhea.

It was an invention of necessity, to explain to us the state in which he had left the bathroom. It painted a vivid picture.

That was the year, 2019, that norovirus and upper respiratory infections ran roughshod through our home, resulting in the memorable Christmas morning when I had to sneak my older son past the festooned and be-presented tree for an emergency room trip, days after we'd visited with the younger one.

It was the year that my father, searching in the middle of the night for a place to, let's just say, burn the candle at both ends, found me curled over the toilet, holding a sick baby on my lap as I vomited inside.

"Oh, no," he said, less from pity than from fear he wouldn't make it to the second bathroom.

Still, though, despite such stiff competition, the Christmas of 2021 will go down in an infamy of infirmity.

My husband was hospitalized multiple times in the weeks running up until the holiday, the third time with a serious blood infection.

"Oh, this could kill you," the ER nurse flippantly replied after he wondered how dire matters were.

After that, when my mother-in-law asked if she could bring me anything, Xanax came to mind.

Meanwhile, the children and I all came down with the same congested, achy fever that, despite checking every box in the COVID bingo card, provided nothing more than a fusillade of negative tests.

Parents know all too well the COVID test dance. Anytime a kid visits the pediatrician for an upset stomach, cut knee or strange rash, the doctor looks in their eyes, ears and mouth, and then, without fail, orders a COVID test.

Our younger son holds the world's record for Most Consecutive Negative COVID Tests, enough that he now has a preferred kind.

"I hope this isn't the coughing one," he said to me the last time we dragged him to the pediatrician's office to be swabbed.

"It's a bug," the pediatrician announced after his latest negative result.

A bug. It sounded so quaint, like saying he had rickets.

Then, once everything seemed to have settled down, with my invalid husband newly released from the hospital into our feeble embrace, the ceiling started leaking.

Not a flood or anything, just a small, insistent drip, the kind intelligence agencies use to torture spies.

Actually, let me be honest: I did not see the drip. I didn't see it because I was upstairs, bathing the kids, or trying to, before I had to pick the entire operation up and move it to the second bathroom.

My fresh-from-the-hospital husband spent the next day sawing a hole in the ceiling, then calling a plumber who has yet to deign us with his presence.

But no matter.

Because the following day was the day that our toddler, flush with the joy and wonder of the season's first snowfall, crammed his maw so full of snow that he spent the next 24 hours vomiting up whatever dog excrement he'd almost certainly ingested.

We took him to the doctor and they, of course, tested him for COVID.

And that brings me to today.

Multiple hospitalizations, a flurry of doctor visits and more COVID tests than an NBA basketball team and we're left here, with one another, limping into the new year, hoping for a respite and, in some strange way, thankful.

Thankful for the perspective that time brings, the clarity of distance.

Thankful for the sisters and brothers and parents who helped us through.

Thankful that things didn't take the truly foul turn they could have.

I mean, it could be worse.

We do have the second bathroom, after all.

To learn more about Georgia Garvey, visit GeorgiaGarvey.com.

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