My four-year-old has a hacking cough and intermittent "I'm going to throw-up"-s. My sixteen-month-old is leaking from every orifice, including his mouth. He announced the mouth-leaking development last night by making a sound I thought was juice spilling. And I guess it was juice spilling, just not from the cup I expected to be spilling from. Unless "cup" is a descriptive word for "mouth."
This bug and/or various strains of it seems to be striking in epidemic levels. Everyone has had it or knows someone who has. Accordingly, I feel as though I should pass along some of the things I've learned, so you can tuck them into your tool belt.
Things I've Learned from Being Home with Two Sick Children
1. It's not as fun as it sounds.
2. Cramming your work responsibilities into the hours of 5-8AM and 7-10PM sounds efficient and praise-worthy. It's actually a sign of delirium.
3. Legal advice should not be provided during the hours of 5-8AM or 7-10PM.
4. If an over-the-counter medicine is going to have absolutely no curative effects on a child, IT SHOULD SAY THAT ON THE DARN BOX.
5. You will spend $50 per day trying to find the miracle medicine. Please refer back to #4.
6. Buy orange juice.
7. The kids' echinacea they sell at Whole Foods is a liar.
8. Toddlers don't know how to blow their nose. Which is a real shame.
9. Toddlers don't know how to cover their mouths. Which is a real shame.
10. Preschoolers consider a medicine cabinet the equivalent of a swim-up bar, seeing as it is full of tasty elixirs and it's near the sink. Make sure your medicine is stored at a height the child can't reach standing on his or her own two feet or on any stool/pet/sibling/toilet within reach.
11. Toddlers don't like to have a piece of cold plastic jammed into their ear for any fraction of a second, no matter how exciting you tell them getting their temperature taken is.
12. If you agree to take a work call while you're at home with your two sick children, you might as well start drafting your letter of resignation and save everyone the trouble.
13. Don't be scared of how your children look when you wake them up from a nap or in the morning. It can all be washed off with a warm wash cloth.
14. Hahahahahaha!!! You won't be waking your children up! They'll do you that favor, probably around 4:30AM. Probably because they know you'll need help getting out of bed to face your pile of office work.
15. The Lion King will distract children for just long enough to write a blog post.
May the force and the multi-vitamins be with you.
Please lock up your medicines! I can tell you from past awful experience that putting them high up is not enough. We finally got a plastic tool box and a padlock, and put the locked box high up on one shelf and hung the key high up on a hook in a different cupboard. That way we could all get to it - and realistically even our son could, but it would have taken him a really long time.
ReplyDeleteIt must have been heartbreaking for you to see your two kids sick. I think you should not let them get close to each other when they are both sick. This is to prevent their fever from getting worse. If you can’t bring them both to their pediatrician, ask the pedia if he/she can do a home visit to check on your kids.
ReplyDelete>Oskar Aarden
It’s really not fun to have a sick kid. Well, not just one but two kids! Double stress, eh? You need to watch them from time to time to make sure that they’re in a good condition. It’s really exhausting, but as a mom, you really wouldn’t mind it. What matters to you is for your children to get better.
ReplyDelete