Ian Takes A Sick Day

Sorry for the absence of an upbeat adventure today, but I've waded my way through Vicks Vapor Rub and mucus filled kleenex to bring you this post.

We all have the crud...Shawn, me, Ian, and maybe even Polli. Either that or she's mirroring our groggy vibes. Ian and I both started sounding rough last week and while I have been coughing and blowing into the weekend, he fared OK, only showing some signs of fatigue and a runny nose. By Sunday though, he was inconsolable. He didn't want to eat, play, be tickled...only sippy, blanket and sleep were welcome. He even had a mild bloody nose in his sleep Saturday night, which was quite unexpected and freaked me out a little. After reading, I think it was just the dry air in our house. Still, waking to see blood on your baby's sheets is scary.

He went to daycare yesterday, but when Shawn went to pick him up, he looked awful. I made an emergency Target run to pick up a humidifier and some Vicks based on the overwhelming online and Real Life advice. We plugged that thing in, gave him a bath, put Vicks on his feet and chest...and he slept through the night without a single cough... 5:30pm to 8:30am.

Pushing through the pain (and with very little paid leave available), I had to work for part of the day before I could come home to stay with him, but Shawn volunteered the "sleep in" shift. When I arrived home at 9:30, Ian was awake, eating breakfast (insisting on being handfed...and unusually picky about bananas and cheerios), and we even got some smiles out of him for the first time in a couple of days. Luckily, he is downing water and juice, which makes me feel a little better about the fact that he's not eating much. His color was better, but I could tell his tank was still running on empty.

We played in slow motion for about an hour before he started to fade. We don't turn the TV on much when he's awake and he's not terribly interested in it anyway, but I made an exception and we sat on the couch and watched Ni Hao, Kai-Lan- the new Nickelodeon cartoon about a Chinese American girl. It teaches snippits about Chinese culture and a few Mandarin words in each episode. It's technically the Chinese equivalent of Dora or Diego. Shawn is so excited that he now knows how to say Hi, Thank You, Red, and Green in Mandarin. Today, Ian and I learned up and down before he started to fall asleep in my lap.

After only being awake for a couple of hours, he's down for a nap that I'm hoping can go for a few hours to zap a little more of his cold out of him. He'll go down early again tonight in the hopes that he'll be well enough in the morning to go to school.

So this is the part of parenting that I did nothing to prepare for. Sitting by idly while my child is sick. There is so little I can do at his age for a cold but I hate to see him miserable. It's such a helpless feeling. He's too young for cold medicine and I don't know that I want to suppress his immune system from doing its job right now anyway. I just really wish I could do more to make him comfortable. I suppose as long as he is sleeping restfully, his body will do its job. I just wish it would do it a little faster!

Hopefully the next time you visit, we'll all be feeling better and the mood will be a bit more positive. If we're feeling up to it by the weekend, we're planning to go to a children's museum near our house, which will be a nice way to celebrate good health (and hopefully not catch more germs!).

The first smile we've seen in a while!

He was so happy to see his blanket. Love at first sight.

It didn't take much playing to wear him out.

Nothing's better than juice and a mom-leg pillow.

Even Polli's taking a sick day.