Sick kiddo....

Add us to the list. The list that everyone I know with kids has been on. That's right - the SICK LIST.

At this point we are hopefully on the tail-end of it, but it's been a rough couple of weeks. A couple of weeks ago I had a little cold. Then while we were at the coast crabbing with my parents, both Max and Luke came down with it. For Max, it was a couple of days of not feeling good - low fever, coughing, one throw-up.

For Luke it has been another thing entirely. He has now been sick for most of two weeks. He stayed home for a whole week, felt better over the weekend, and then was down and out again by the end of this week. It's the fever that was the most concerning - 105 degrees for a day or two. Dan took him into the pediatrician's office where he was swabbed for H1N1. The test came back negative and the conclusion was that it was just a bad bug. Now he's got the runny nose and hacking cough.

It's so tough when little ones are under the weather. All you want to do is make it better. And seriously - more than an hour and a half of consecutive sleep sounds pretty good, too. But I can't complain. There are so many out there feeling so much worse. I hope you all aren't among them!

Every time one of the boys gets sick and need to stay home, Dan and I have to have the "Who will stay home" discussion. Work loads are weighed, meetings compared, and sick leave evaluated. And one of us stays. But I can't tell you how thankful we are to both work in jobs that provide us with some paid sick leave. Because the one thing we don't have to discuss is how we will afford to stay home with our sick child. We don't have to dip into our savings, or push the kids to go to school ill. It is something I wish for everyone and has become one of my personal political crusades. Because we are all healthier when parents can keep sick kids home.

Ok, better go. There are noses that need wiping.....again.