Famous Last Words

Remember when I posted last week about the kids having been "relatively healthy" this winter? Remember my hesitancy in even writing such an audacious claim? I believe my exact words were:

"In fact, for the last six weeks, the kids have been eerily healthy. I've been incredibly grateful for this, scared to mention this fact to anyone lest it cause the situation to change, and in the back of my mind, waiting for the other shoe to drop."

Well, the wait is over. The other shoe has officially "dropped." Grace came down with the her first full-fledged cold on Sunday. I wasn't overly concerned, in fact I was pretty impressed that Grace had made it 10 months without a single sick visit to the doctor. But Sunday night... was a little rough. Last night was even rougher. This morning, she "woke" (I use the term loosely, as she barely slept the whole night) with a fever of 101.

I took her to the doctor this morning. Diagnosis? A cold, that's gone into bronchitis. A double ear infection, worse in the left ear than in the right. She managed to contract the molluscum that our family has been battling for two years now. Oh, and by the way, she's teething.

When the doctor came in with a handful of prescriptions and started going through the instructions, I actually started laughing. I wasn't trying to be rude, but I've never had so much medication flung at me in one doctor's visit: Motrin for teething pain, fever and ear discomfort. Ear numbing drops for pain. Amoxicillin for ears and chest. Expectorant to loosen the gunk in her chest. Benzoyl peroxide applied to molluscum as needed. Was there going to be a test on this? Mercifully, he wrote it all down.

My mom watched Josh while I took Grace to the doctor, allowing me to avoid exposing him to the germ-filled petri dish, otherwise known as the "Sick Child Waiting Room." Upon my arrival back at mom's, I asked Josh to please go use the potty. A few minutes later, the sound of something falling and breaking glass. Josh had managed to fall off of the stool and crash his head into my mom's ceramic wastebasket, which lay shattered on the floor. His injury -- an impressive-looking gash above the ear.

I called my husband at work to ask his thoughts about stitches -- not that he could really help with the decision. I was the one staring at the head wound, after all. But, after a short discussion, which included a recap of Josh's November ER visit for another head gash, we agreed that stitches probably wouldn't be possible in this case.

And, if I forgot to mention it, Jillian is nursing a wicked head cold and still getting drops to treat last week's pink eye.

"Relatively healthy," did I say?

Clearly, those words are now dripping with irony.