Well I am back.
We happen to still be in the trenches of the plague that struck over a week ago but after 9 straight days I feel confident I have some advice to share:
1. Do not go visit preschools toting all of your young children who have barely left the house their entire life and have no immunity to anything.
2. Do not let these curious young children touch ANYTHING within the walls of each preschool.
3. Do not forget to cover their entire bodies with hand sanitizer after leaving said preschool.
4. If you get the inclination to take your children to one of those insane child play areas after said preschool tours as the icing on the germ/plague transferring cake, don’t do it, turn the minivan around and return to your highly sanitized home.
5. As children undoubtedly begin to contract the plague, place each child securely in his or her own bubble, complete with sippy cup, bed, blanket, pillow and a collection of Dora movies.
6. If said bubble bursts follow plague-ridden child around with hand sanitizer, antibacterial wipes, his or her own personal potty and a fly swatter to shoo away uninfected siblings.
7. Once uninfected siblings become infected get yourself some wine, drink straight from the bottle, they are too sick to notice.
8. When taking the child who is currently the most ill to the pediatrician do not put the diaper bag at his feet in the vehicle and do not leave it unzipped. Especially if said child has a tendency to throw up. Often.
9. When the thought crosses your mind to bring towels to put on said child’s lap while you are still in your driveway, put the car in park and go get them. Do not decide things will be fine and proceed to the doctor’s office without towels covering said child from head to toe.
10. Look carefully for onlookers before leaving your vehicle as you attempt to carry a sick child into your pediatrician’s office wearing nothing but a winter hat, coat, and your scarf on his legs in the dead of winter while repeating the words “come on, come on, follow me, keep walking” to his wandering siblings who have no regards for temperature or traffic.
11. Once home from pediatrician, ER and a brief hospital stay repeat step 7.
12. And lastly, do not, I repeat, do not, get sick yourself. If your name is Mom, you are not allowed.
What is your best parenting advice when dealing with sick children? I would love to hear it, especially if it involves a ridiculous mistake you made that will make me feel better about the blunders of my week.
Perfecting the art of giving orders while resting. I have yet to inform her that she should not get used to this if she plans to have children some day.
In the spirit of advice, my blog is in the running to be one of the Top 25 Moms Blogs for Parenting Advice and Tips at Circle of Moms. I would love your vote. You can vote once per day (just in case you want to go back and do it again tomorrow and the next day and the next day after that). Just click HERE and scroll down a bit until you see me. Thank you!!
Comments
Powered by Facebook Comments
World wide web accessories such as follow buttons became seriously popular .
Hahaha! Oh goodness, this is funny. And yet so true!
Oh honey, I am so sorry that all of this happened to you! I love the post, have no advice, but will happily clink wine with you! And seriously? LOVE that photo!!
Good Lord sweet friend, how on earth do you do it?
Wish we were neighbors, we’d be drinking out of the bottle together some nights and how fun would that be.
Prayers for your family my dear xxx
ps. voted … hell yes 🙂
Wine……LOTS of wine.
I’m sorry you have been through so much lately and that your little guy is in the hospital right now. Lots of good thoughts and hugs to you Mama! Looking forward to updates on how he’s doing. I’ll be watching my twitter feed a little closer.
Thanks so much for your thoughts and all of your tweeted support. I really appreciate it!
What a week you have had!
One winter, my kids were sick so much that the receptionist at the doctor’s office knew my voice- I just had to say “Hello, Miss Michelle…” and she’d ask me which kid it was this time.
I’m starting to get offended that mine does know my voice by now. Glad to know that you have made it through the kind of winter we are having and survived!
Great advice!! So sorry you had to learn these 12 things the hard way…. Hope everyone is feeling better soon.
#12 is a joke and sadly, you are probably next!!
Here’s hoping you have plenty of wine on tap. 🙂
It’s just about impossible to prevent illness from seeping through the armor, isn’t it?
While I don’t remotely like that your poor little kiddies were sick, I do LOVE this post! Too cute Jessica! I have so many fears for next year. My kids barely leave our nicely-sanitized home as well and I’m so worried about the petri dish some refer to as preschool. I see a lot of fevers & sniffles in my future.
Me too! Don’t know how we are going to make it through next year, especially after what the tours alone did to us.
Ugh. No advice here. Just hopes that your little ones get back to feeling good soon!
Thinking of you and your family.
We are in the never ending cycle of The Sick as well.
My only advice it to act natural, like it is perfectly normal to have a naked child at the dr office, I mean, people do it every day right? Just read your a magazine and casually hold the garbage can under your child’s face while they vomit, and keep another one of the children close by to turn the pages of the magazine until the vomiting has stopped.
Hope y’all are hanging in there today. Hospital rooms get uncomfortable quickly. (((you)))
Laughing at this comment, we left the office with him walking the halls wearing a paper exam sheet, he strutted down the hall like wearing paper with a winter coat was completely natural. I need to learn from you AND him.
You know I”ll be voting, b/c you would have been such a sweet balm to hurt minds, had I found you in my earlier days.
More new moms need to find you. I will do all I can to be sure to help this happen.
Thanks you so much as always, you are too good to me.
Oh goodness…we have had the crud for weeks. It just keeps coming back. My kids didn’t actually have the stomach flu, but they were coughing so hard that they threw up a few times. Each time, I was the recipient of the vomit, so each time I was bathing/showering with said child in the middle of the night. That smell just doesn’t go away, no matter how hard you scrub.
Oh, also, had to take Freddie to the doc because of wheezing…but I didn’t really think he was wheezing…oh he was wheezing. Felt about an inch tall when they told me they may send me to the ER…oh and then he had a huge diaper blow out and I just didn’t have the diaper bag with me. All the doc office had were size 2 diapers…Freddie? Not a size 2. So I constructed a larger diaper out of 2 smaller ones. That was a really bad day.
Amazingly, I have not gotten sick yet…it’s all those daycare germs that Ainsley’s been bringing home for the past 3 years…I am super human!
Yeah, my best advice is to build a time machine to FF to the age where they can make it to the bathroom themselves. MY bed is not the place to come to throw up.
Pay me Now or Pay me Later. I hate to say it but one way or another, your kids will get sick. My son was sick for four years straight it seems but hasn’t gotten sick in years. YEARS! In fact, I can’t even remember the last time he was sick and he’s 17.
Good luck!
oh, momma. Why don’t kids come with bubbles yet? Hope things get better soon
Well, I am glad you can keep your sense of humor amid the chaos… or is it just the result of drinking wine straight from the bottle? =P I am a total wimp when it comes to one sick baby… I shake in my boots at the idea of having more! Bless you! Stay strong, and hope you all feel better soon!
Praying for you all. Yes, Moms are not allowed to get sick. ha ha. Hope Parker is feeling better soon!
Great advise! I set up a sick area, complete with sheet covered couch, tv tray, remote, bucket and special blanket, tissues, garbage, etc. Everyone except mom keeps a 4 foot radius away. They stay there unless it’s potty time. Once they are better, I burn it all 😉 I am going to add step number 7!
Oh, god… our plague has been going on for about 3 weeks now, I’ve been down, myself, for the last 72 hours. Heeeeelllpppp meeeeeeeeeee (Love that picture, though!!)
Oh man, you’ve been through the wringer this week! I hate the vomit the most…remember picking husband up from the airport with a barfing toddler leaning over the garden bucket in the backseat while his baby sister inhaled all of his germs.
Fun times.
“Do not under feed child anything containing: blueberries, tomatoes, sweet potatoes, or carrots – unless you want to dye all cloth surfaces that color.”
“Do investigate the wonders of “PBS Kids” and throw every TV viewing rule out the window for the duration of quarantine.”
I feel as though I could have written this post. I’m so glad The Plague has passed (I call it that too).
Excellent checklist.
Hi there–I think just repeating step 7 over and over……
I’m not a barf girl either and have been known to say in a high pitch voice, “Go see daddy! GO SEE DADDY–NOW!!!”
Oh my gosh, hilarious. I have been known to throw up at the mere sound of someone else doing it. Not a great mom trait. I believe I have done that same high pitched voice, so funny!
I’m really really bad at dealing with vomit. I’ve been known to call my husband home from work to come take care of it. If my kids get sick at night, they know to go to his side of the bed and wake him up.