Toddlers have an innate ability to catch every strange bug floating around and spread it to the rest of their family, it seems.  It’s really no surprise when you see how they interact with the world around them.  Hands in their mouths and noses for no good reason.  Eating any random food they find.  Refusing anything that might be deemed as healthy and nutritious. I feel like Jude’s been sick a lot this year, but in reality I suppose once a month sickness is pretty much par for the course for your average preschooler.

So as I’d mentioned before, about two weeks ago, a mean head cold made its way around to Jude, then me, then Scott.  It seemed to stop there, but let me tell you it was MISERABLE.  Like I’d almost  think I had the flu with all the aches and two days of fever and copious snot, but it came on too slowly to qualify for influenza.  After we seemed to recuperate, Jude kept up this horrible hacking cough that sounded terrible and developed a fever after the cold, which is never ever a good sign.  I take him in last Tuesday.  The nurse practioner listens to his chest, says it sounds terrible and gives him a breathing treatment and a prescription for steroids and a mild antibiotic because she “cannot rule out pneumonia in that left lung based on what I hear.”  This is where my mom radar freaks out a bit and feels really grateful that Norah hasn’t caught the nastiness.  We get his meds and head home and he’s much improved in the following days.

And oh yeah, the next morning my husband woke up on his birthday to horrible food poisoning he acquired at a famous Atlanta BBQ joint.  He spent his whole day in bed, and I felt like I had 5 kids.  A toddler with ‘roid rage, a puking husband, and a baby who actually had a good reason to act like a baby given that she really is one.

Then Thursday afternoon, Norah went down for a nap and woke up screaming at the top of her lungs and running a fever.  I rush to the pediatrician yet again.  They do an RSV test and it’s positive.  Breathing treatments for her and poor bug has an ear infection, too.

Then on the weekend, they look like this and I assume the universe is obviously going to correct everything since Scott has some work travel this week.

They play happily and everything seems great until Jude wakes from sleep at 9pm yelling about his ear.  I gave him Advil and he promptly wakes up at exactly 3am when it wore off, still yelling.  At this point, it becomes really clear to me that we are in for round three, so I try to medicate him and keep him comfortable until our scheduled Monday morning follow-up with the pediatrician, but his fever soars to 102.8 and he’s crying and saying he wants to nap which means clearly he has lost his mind and is very, very sick because daytime sleep has not been okay with him in months.  So I call my pediatrician who calls in a stronger antibiotic and after two doses, he is already doing so much better.

But then Norah’s fever soared in the middle of the night last night, and I pretty much just stayed awake and rocked her and listed nervously to her scary raspy wheeze all night.  Back to the doctor this morning for our follow up and now she’s on a steroid and has increased the number of her breathing treatments.  Apparently this strain of RSV this year is really brutal, and I am not being overdramatic in saying that I really think she’d be hospitalized if she were a tiny baby.  She is on the mend, I hope, and she’s eating and drinking well.  So  I think we are emerging just fine.  And judging from the fact that Jude ran around all day like the usual toddler maniac he is, I think he’s much improved for sure.

Kids can get sick so fast and then turn it around so fast too, you know?  It’s beyond my understanding.

So things getting me through this week?  Bubble baths after the kids are asleep.  Knitting on my almost-finished Henslowe.  Dove chocolates.  An HGTV magazine I picked up on a pharmacy run yesterday.  Downton Abbey.

And the promise that this too shall pass.