A Rare Happening

This has been a strange couple of days. Both kids are sick at once. Both are running fevers. Both are complaining of headaches. Both are complaining of sore throats. It's not odd to have sick kids this year, but to have two kids sick at exactly the same time, odd.

Then today, it's all explained: 11 out of 25 kids in their class stayed home sick. Obviously, the whole room full of kids caught some nasty bug at once, not just mine. But this has led us to discovered an unexpected aspect of having kids in the same class: they get sick on the same schedule. Whodathunk?

It's not completely inconvenient. 1.) I made one appointment with the doctor for the both of them. She was happy to combine appointments. It saves us both time. 2.) It condenses the overall time of people being sick in the house thus reducing the amount of time the Dad and I have to juggle the coverage of sick kids. 3.) Cuts down on trips to the pharmacy. However, this does not mean it cuts down on the number of meds purchase, just the number of trips to buy meds. If only they could agree on one type of fever reducer. (La Nina likes grape, the Magster is a fan of bubble gum flavors.)

Dual illnesses also sort of complicates the whole getting up in the middle of the night. Let's say you are up with one and check the other one and discover the sleeper is burning up with a fever. Do you wake up the sleeper to take their temperature? I did, and then had an energetic Magster awake for an hour and a half from 3am to 4:30am. Bad move. I should have known better with that child. Never wake a sleeping Magster. I learned that lesson in China, what was I thinking?

Then, there's also the whole thermometer dilemma. I swipe it on one kid, I swipe it on the next kid. It's 3 in the morning. By the time I'm done with the second kid, I can't remember what it said for the first kid and she's already back to sleep. Do I go back and swipe again and risk a bitter angry La Nina or just console myself that it was over 101? I chose just go with assumption she had a pretty high fever and skip retaking her temperature. I already had the spunky Magster wide awake, no need to add to the middle of the night party.

If this whole thing follows the same path as the kids that were sick last week, someone will have strep (my money's on La Nina) hopefully not both of them. Both will run fevers for 4 days. We're on day 2-3. So, the kids will be back in school by Thursday or Friday. And hopefully, I'll figure out how to manage the midnight nursing duties a little more efficiently.