Just when you’re convinced of your intellectual superiority and feeling all confident that you are THE best mom ever, along comes a big humbling moment to knock you off that pedestal and leave you feeling stupid and WAY overtired, and in need of some empathy.

Time to blog.

Kelsey and Laurel both came down with a cold last week. Not big news. We’re all veterans of the every-season cold here. But then, the four-year-old had crusty, red eyes Monday and Tuesday. Thinking it was lack of sleep and leftovers from the cold, I just gave her benadryl and cleaned her face a whole lot. Which is, I find out later, the best thing you can do to treat this particular condition. Kudos to me for my intuition.

Oh, wait, take that back. Because I’d used the same facecloth to wash the two-year-old’s face, and this particular condition is highly contagious.

D’oh.

Kelsey slept either in my arms or beside me in our bed, displacing the poor husband, Monday and Tuesday night, waking every hour to cry out in her sleep that she hurt, but so sleepy that she couldn’t tell me what was wrong. So I kept her medicated, watched her temperature, gave her fluids, and got through it.

Yesterday, a friend of mine wrote a blog post about his child’s recent experience with
conjunctivitis. *Lightbulb comes on* They visited with us over the weekend *Realization hits *. Oh.

So, it’s really no wonder that my kids have sore, crusty, red eyes . Either we infected our friend’s child, or vice versa, or everyone got it at the same time. Whereas his child was diagnosed at school, I haven’t the benefit of parental experience or the paranoia of contagion that public schools have, so I had no idea that Kelsey’s eye crud–and now Laurel’s is the telltale sign that your child has conjunctivitis, also called pink eye. And that it’s more contagious than ebola.

I may be dramatizing just a bit, but when your pediatrician asks that you NOT come in to confirm the diagnosis, and that a prescription will be called in to the pharmacy, you get the idea that perhaps this whole pink eye thing is one of those parenting things I should have seen coming, huh? *sigh*

For the first time in a week, Kelsey slept all night last night. So, of course, last night was Laurel’s turn. There is always balance, isn’t there? I am, at the very least, thankful that the suffering and illness was staggered. Sick kids always want the mommy, don’t they? Laurel was up from 1 to 3:30 am, complaining of eyes that hurt, before I finally dropped her ass in her crib and cajoled her to sleep. Then Kelsey was up at 6, in the mood to abuse my ears while we cuddled in bed. Have I written before about my older child’s ear fetish? Anyway, at 7:30 I finally gave up and stumbled off to find sleep elsewhere, leaving Kelsey with her father. Mmmm. Couch. Sleep.

So, today I’m off to the pharmacy for an antibiotic for the younger one. And I need to keep a close watch on Kelsey to make sure she doesn’t get it again. And time to obsessive compulsively wash all our hands again and again and again. My kids are ecstatic about THIS turn of events, because it means they can play in the sink with the Kandoo all day long!

I’m not used to this lack of sleep anymore. My kids have been sleeping mostly through the night for over a year. It’s familiar, this tiredness. Makes me wonder. Wow, was I this tired every day of Kelsey’s first year of life? No wonder I found old, dried up brain cells on my pillow each morning….

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