So the winter sicknesses have hit the Scott house. You may consider disinfecting your keyboard and mouse when you are done reading this. You can never be too safe.
Last week Emilyn was diagnosed with pink eye. Great. Every day I have to sit on her to pin her arms down while I pry open her eyes with one hand and the other hand has to hold her head still while I put her medicine in with the other hand.
Did ya' catch that last one? :) Three hands? I wish! If evolution was true new mom's would leave the hospital with real eyes in the backs of their heads and an extra arm with an extension.
Anywho needless to say we have been a little fanatical about hand washing around here. If Ahston couldn't talk yet I'm sure his first words would be "get your hands away from your face!".
Now both the kids have colds. Ashton's nose was running like a faucet all day the past two days. Ick. It is kind of funny though. He doesn't say, "I have a runny nose" like most normal kids. It always comes out "I have a bloody nose". If you don't come running with the tissue he starts repeatedly yelling it louder and louder. An almost 2-year-old screaming, "I HAVE A BLOODY NOSE!!!" as if he is dying is quite comical.
Last night Emilyn was up coughing quite a bit. It wasn't the kind of cough that woke her up. But it woke me up. Every. Time. She. Coughed. Gosh I just love that ultra sensitive mom sense. It seems especially sharp at night. That kind of thing NEVER wakes Kyle up. Or at least that's what he says. Needless to say I was up and down the stairs quite a bit trying as many things I could think of to ease the cough. Humidifier. Propped up pillows. Drinks of water. (Which is consequently very hard to make a sleeping 3-year-old drink water). The only thing that came of it was the poor kid rolled off the pillow and got her head stuck under the little rail on the side of her bed. Stellar mom award right there people. Finally I resorted to medicine. I gave her some homeopathic cough syrup and went back to bed. I kept waiting for it to kick in. Didn't happen. Didn't happen. Didn't happen. Almost 2 hours later I busted out the big guns. Robitussin. I laid in bed thinking, "If she coughs one more time, I'm going up there again. And there is was. One more. That's IT! I filled the medicine syringe and headed up in a huff.
Now I need to take you down a little side road for a second. Although my kids are very much their own individuals there are several things about them that are creepily similar. Their coughs being one of them. If I'm not in the room with them I have a difficult time distinguishing their coughs.
I needed to make sure it really WAS Emilyn and not Ashton coughing. After all I didn't want to medicate one of my kids if it wasn't needed. That would be disastrous. I'm sure it would create an early dependence on medication later leading to substance abuse at some point. Gosh that mom sense really sounds logical late at night. Sheesh. I should have just giving both of them some medicine and called it good several hours earlier. But I didn't. I stood in their room with the glow of the nightlight on the wall, waiting. Standing between Ashton's crib and Emilyn's toddler bed, holding the syringe loaded with the all-powerful Robitussin, ready to pounce. I waited for several minutes. And several more. Not a single peep out of either one of them. Finally I gave up. I took the medicine back downstairs and didn't hear a sound for the rest of the night. (By then it was closer to morning though.) Really?! Seriously? Was it only the threat of real medicine that made her stop coughing? Good grief.
I'm tired. But I have a plan for tonight. If someone starts coughing, I'm chugging the entire bottle of Robitussin myself and hope it kicks in before the guilt.
Good night!
P.S. I'll leave you with a few pictures. Who doesn't love pictures? Now maybe you will understand why I hiked up those stairs a million times last night. Anything for these faces. Holy moley I love them :)
