Sickety Sick Sick...

Or, "An open apology to everyone who I let be exposed to my son last week when I thought he was *just teething*"

Because, yeah, it's not about the teeth; it's a cold. Little man E has one of those non-stop faucet-noses going on and he's rocking a kick-ass cough. Poor thing. He feels miserable.

Well, maybe he's miserable. It's hard to tell when he's running around all day long like a lunatic, chasing cats, pushing chairs and sliding down slides. See, Ethan's apparently worked out an "only sick at night" policy with his immune system, or least the part of his immune system that clues him into his symptoms.

All day he is content to do his normal thing--playgroup, the park, Tiny Time at the gymnasium, Mr. Skip, sign language class, and the list goes on and on (as does the number of children I potentially infected with his cooties while I insisted he was just teething, pre-cough). I chase him with a tissue and he protests mightily. But that's about it. There's no fussing or complaining or general malaise one associates with feeling like ass.

At night, however, he lets us know, approximately every. single. hour. how yucky he is feeling. We do the steam bath, we do the nasal aspirator (to rave reviews, let me tell you; he loves nothing more than the nasal aspirator), we do the baby vapor rub and humidifier. We do it all. Now that the FDA has scared me out of even contemplating poisoning my child with Benadryl or the like, this is all we do. Oh, and the good old prop up on the pillow.

None of it works. Ethan is up, lamenting the fact that breathing is such a chore, coughing and sneezing with a frequency that makes me question my sanity at ever wanting a newborn again. He is so confused as to why this whole breathing thing, which he's been doing for almost a year and a half without a hitch, is suddenly such a struggle. I wish I could do something to make him feel better.

Of course, all I need to do is wait until 7:30am the next morning, when he decides whatever catnap he's coming out of will be his last for the night. Then, while the symptoms remain, his inability to deal with them gets put aside for the day and he's Mr. Fun&Energy, while Husband and I lie there, incredulous. How is it possible? We've all gotten a total of 4-5 hours of sleep. Husband and I are zombified for yet another day. And there is Ethan, bouncing on the bed, taunting the cats, signing for milk and ready for the day.

He seems to be on the mend in the past day or two, which is good. But for the next two weeks I will have to be mixing up batches of chicken soup (in an apparently imaginary kitchen) for all the kids Ethan has so graciously swapped germs with.