While the Spouse is Away...

The kids always get sick.

This is a tradition of long-standing I'm sorry to say. An unintentional one that crops up with discouraging regularity. Just like our predictable bouts with colds or flus or even ear infections on Christmas day. It happens.

I'd practically forgotten my spouse was heading out for a week of training until last weekend, when our youngest started coughing and hacking his lungs out. I had an Ah ha! moment and remembered, oh yeah, she's going on a trip, that's why he's getting sick right now. Of course!

Then our daughter started feeling crumby the next afternoon, and throwing up by evening. Poor sweetie. Even as I fetched Gatorade and saltine crackers in the hopes of staunching the flow of bad bacteria growing in her gastrointestinal tract, I knew this week was going to get ugly. At any moment I'd be hurling, too.

We're a close knit family. Both good emotionally and for spreading sickness. We share everything.

The hacker coughed in my face for an hour Sunday evening as I put him to bed, so that's coming soon, but you can't deny a sick kid the comfort of a cuddle, can you? Cough syrup helped, but it is no replacement for snuggling in a warm bed with a Scooby-doo book and a mom.

They were both up at six this morning. I've mentioned previously that I think these moments of adversity are good for family bonding, but surely we've gotten all we can out of this sort of thing? Isn't there a time when Karmic comeuppance or whatever is causing all this onslaught will be done?

I take vitamins. I wash my hands a lot. Usually I eat vegetables and fruits and whole grains (when I'm sick I have cravings for oatmeal cookies and Burger King, so that'll be on the menu soon). Sometimes I get a lighter case than the kids. Mostly even. Maybe I've missed one or two... no, not really.

It was exactly a month ago that our youngest brought home the first sickness of the school season. This is number two. If we're unlucky, we'll continue this schedule and be ill on Thanksgiving and Christmas. Though that would be nothing new. We're tough. We can take it. After all, it's tradition.