Sick Sick Sicky Sick

(MH asleep after a harrowing trip to the doctor's. I realize that 53% of all pictures on this blog are pictures of my kid asleep in her car seat, but whatever.)

Back in the day, I used to say, "There's nothing worse than a sick man." This was when I owned a yarn store and hung out with middle aged ladies all day. They would talk about their husbands--ex, dead, and otherwise--and their hysterectomies. I would nod knowingly and say shit like, "There's nothing worse than a sick man." I thought it made me sound world weary and fifty-something. And also, in my limited experience, it was true. My dad is notoriously bad at being sick. And while Jonathan is okay at it, nobody is really a good sick person. And if you're not sick too--well, it's kind of like being the only sober person at the party.

Anyway, then my toddler got sick last week and I have to amend my statement of folksy wisdom: "there's nothing worse than a sick kid." Yes, for all the regular reasons--you hate to see your baby in pain, etc--but mostly because your sick toddler will only sleep if they use your face as a pillow and spend the night coughing directly into your mouth. Your sick toddler refuses to take medicine so you have to hold her down and inject cough syrup down her throat while she screams, making giving the dog a pill look like a freaking sunny walk in the park. Your sick toddler suddenly has developed a crushing dependency on you and refuses any attention or affection from their father. So you spend days (nights) with a hot, sweating toddler wiping her nose on your shirt and crying whenever you aren't watching Curious George.

And guess what? The inevitable happened. So now I'm amending my two previous statements to this: "There's nothing worse than being sick when you are pregnant and your toddler is sick too." (I just put the pregnant part in there because being pregnant just automatically makes everything worse/people feel sorry for you.)

Anyway, this is all just a long way of saying I haven't been around because we've all been sick.