Big Girl has a cold.
I always feel like a negligent parent when she gets sick. I am so dense when it comes to reading her cues sometimes. She was really cranky yesterday, didn't eat much dinner -- which is totally out of character because spaghetti is her favorite, sneezed huge snot-balls through her bath, and her teachers said she slept a lot in school.
Hello, mom. Wake up and smell the saliva-soaked bib. Something's going on with Big Girl!
But did I catch on?
No.
Instead, I put her to bed and she coughed for an hour. Then I got her back up, tried to feed her some more, watched her fall asleep in my arms, get up to put her to bed, watch her wake up whining, and put her to bed anyway. Then listened to her cough in her sleep for another hour. THEN and only then did I realize that she wasn't just in a bad mood. She was coughing her "my sinuses are draining like mad and it tickles my throat and I can't blow my nose or do anything about it so I have to just cough it up" cough. A dose of Children's Vicks and half an hour got her to sleep. I'm sure she was thinking, "FI-nally! She figured it out!"
What's weird is that she was messing around with her Dynavox most of the evening and got on many different pages. But she never went to "What's wrong with me" and said, "I don't feel good." I guess we still have a ways to go with that. She's been getting much better and much more accurate lately (even without the keyguard) at using it for communication, not just to play with. But she hasn't been sick much, so maybe she just didn't remember that she could tell me felt sick, or didn't know that how she felt was "sick."
So now I'm dodging germs. Which is difficult when your child prefers to projectile-cough. I don't know why she does this, but when she's sick, she coughs with her mouth in an "oo" shapes, which serves as a great cannon to shoot all the mucus in her nose, throat, and mouth in a concentrated stream across the room.
She also likes to cough directly in your face. I think she does it because she's looking at me and appealing for some sort of relief. I give her what medicine I can and try to make her comfortable. But no amount of hand-washing and vitamin C and Zinc will protect against that direct contact with her virus.
Why am I so concerned about germs? You'd think that as a veteran mother of 3, I'd be LESS worried. Kind of a "aah, it's no big deal" mentality. Au contraire. I have been infected about 20 times too many by the delightful children featured in my profile photo. Frankly, I would rather only tend one sick child, not three sick kids and myself! I'm a much nicer, more creative, fun-to-be-around person when I'm healthy! And with three kids to keep up with, I simply don't have time to be run down and on slow from a cold.
I also really want to stay healthy because my sister had her first baby yesterday! She lives about 2 hours away from me, so I can't go visit until Saturday. With Big Girl in kindergarten, I can't get there and back and still get her on and off the bus. And I can't go if I'm sick. If a newborn gets a cold, they end up in the hospital. I have been there, done that, and don't want to be responsible for sending a little one there! So I may not go, even if I'm still feeling ok, if more kids are sick by Saturday. I would hate to go and then feel sick the next day -- I would clearly have taken the germs with me the day before. So I'm praying, scrubbing my hands, taking vitamins, and doing my level-headed-best to stay out of the splatter zone. And not touch my face.
In other news, have I mentioned that Little Girl still isn't sleeping through the night? Big Boy was definitely doing it by this age. I guess I am reluctant to let her cry it out because she can wake up Big Girl and disrupt Big Boy's sleep. I would rather get up for 20 minutes to nurse her than deal with 2 cranky kids the next day. But it's getting old. She's like an alarm clock -- she gets me up at 4am like clockwork. Then it is so hard for me to get up when I need to in the morning. I don't have time for this -- I need to bounce out of bed, grab a shower, get dressed, and eat breakfast before any of the kids get up! If I don't get something done before the kids wake up, I don't get it done that entire day.
Yes, that means I don't eat breakfast some days. Other days I don't shower. Other days I don't get dressed until midday. Such is the life of a sleepy mother of three. I swear I need a catapult to launch me out of bed!
