Germ House

The past few days have been rough-going in the Rowe household.  As I have mentioned, first I came down with some sort of flu-like illness, and within the next 24 hours Ethan was down for the count.

To add to all this fun, we got hit with a snowstorm yesterday, which meant Ethan and I were out shovelling the driveway with our bronchial coughs and aching muscles, making us feel even MORE awesome.

The Rowes are dropping like flies here, folks.  Within the past day, both Julia and Madeleine have come down with the virus, and both are now in bed with fevers and coughs. 

Now, although the girls are both sick with the same illness, they are not necessarily responding to it the same way.  I have noticed in the past that Julia and Madeleine have very different sick personalities, not just with this flu, but with all sickness.  For example, Julia and Madeleine are TOTALLY different pukers.  Julia is an extremely panicked puker, exploding with vomit all over the place even as she anxiously fights to prevent the expulsion.  Madeleine, on the other hand, is completely resigned to her plight, and will simply open her mouth and languidly let the vomit pour out into a pile in her lap.

The same can be said for their fever personalities.  Julia needed me to come and lay in bed with her while she convulsed with chills, unable to get settled into a comfortable position, continually clutching at me as if wanting to exorcise her fever through contact with me.  Madeleine, meanwhile, lay in a sluggish heap on the couch with the blanket bundled around her, responding with a weary thumbs-down signal when asked how she was doing.

And I must say, both displays of misery are simply breaking my heart.  I have spent much of the morning going back and forth between the girls, cuddling them, giving them medicine, and trying to comfort them.  And it's hard to do this, because they both want me full-time.

JULIA: Mommy?  Can you stay with me FOREVER? 


MADELEINE: Stay whole time.  Stay whole time nappy-bappy.


(Yes, even in their expressions of mommy-need they have their own personalities.)


The kids definitely feel rotten, and I don't blame them for acting miserable about it.  However, I do take issue with ONE comment of Madeleine's, in which she attempted to convince me that her sickness was more severe than mine had been.

MADELEINE: (looking at me gravely) Mama?  Do you know that my cold is even WORSER than your cold?  Because Mama.  Here's the thing that *I* have that you didn't even have: the HICCUPS.

I mean, having the hiccups stinks and all, but they're just an unfortunate coincidence with the cold, not a symptom of it.  Kind of like the fact that during my illness, I developed a cavity that is causing miserable shooting pain through my tooth every time I drink something cold.  But I won't argue with Madeleine here, because in her book, these hiccups really are adding insult to injury.


Julia has not attempted to compare her sickness to anyone else's, and has instead gone with a broad description of her discomfort.

JULIA: (miserably) I still feel stinky PLOP-PO.

These poor kiddos.

Live from the trenches, I'm Courtney Rowe, signing off.