The Things I Have Learned as a Parent: Illness Edition

For once, the size of my posterior hasn't been the main thing on my mind.

There are all kinds of things that you learn when you become a parent--things that you wish someone had warned you about in advance.  I find that I am still discovering these gems after three & a half years on the job.  In honor of one of the longest, most grueling weekends of my life:

The Things I Have Learned as a Parent: Illness Edition

• Children don't care if you are on a toilet with a bucket in your lap, praying for the sweet embrace of death: when they want to hear "Knuffle Bunny Too" for the 80 millionth time, they mean now.
• Children don't understand the phrases "highly contagious" or "communicable disease" so don't try to use them as a deterrent from cup sharing.  It also will not quell requests for bites of your toast.
• Speaking of toast, children do not respect when their own bodies are too sick for food, so why would they understand when yours is?  There will be a riot if you try to sit at a table during meal time & don't consume an acceptable amount of food.
• If you think that you'll be fine feeding your children chicken nuggets while you sip your broth, think again.  The smell of those cursed nuggets will waft all over the house & you'll feel just as sick as if you had eaten them yourself.
• It takes a lifetime to raise a child that will choose active play over a "Super Why" DVD.  It takes exactly half a day to undo all of that prior effort & create a zombie for whom the only acceptable activities involve remote controls.
• Children, like many animals, are highly attuned to the emotions of their captors & are adept at exploiting them.  When you've just gotten to sleep after a harrowing battle with your illness, your child will wake up & need something you wouldn't normally allow.  For this very reason, my son is now sleeping with a ziplock bag of dirt.
• After lovingly & painstakingly preparing homemade meals for your children day after day, week after week, it only takes one day for kids to revert to drooling over Lunchables & Nutrigrain bars.
• Children are adorable, but they are useless when it comes to doing laundry, making soup, or doling out drugs.  If you thought you could get your 1 year old to change your sheets for you, you would be wrong...so wrong.
• The phrase "please be quiet" triggers some sort of instant opposite-day scenario among young children.  When paired with the phrase "Mommy/Daddy has a headache," the results are likely to break noise ordinances in most neighborhood settings.
• A child will be unable to find a "lost" toy that is laying at his feet...& yet somehow be able to find & try to eat the single Imodium capsule that you dropped in the middle of the night & left for dead in desperation.
• "Lord of the Flies" isn't a work of fiction, no matter what the librarians might say.  It is real, very real.  When the kids are in charge, Piggy gets it & you just better hope that they don't think you're Piggy.

I am happy to say that Dave & I appear to have come out on the other side of intense intestinal trauma without being sacrificed for our glasses & sincerely wish that we are NEVER sick at the same time again.

Yesterday, I whined, "I wish we had a nanny & a housekeeper."  To which Dave replied: "Why, so they could be sick, too?"  Me, "I wish we were the Jetsons...Rosie never got sick."  So if anyone is looking for a gift to give me, I would like to be the Jetsons for one week, complete with the use of Rosie...this house is a disaster!