Sick Baby

Our 3 year old, Stella, is sick. Having a sick 3 year old is the worst. Sick teenagers are way easier. With teenagers it’s like, “Oh you have a fever? Here’s a bottle of Tylenol and a glass of water. Watch some Netflix and call me when you’re ready to crawl out of your hole.” But sick 3 year olds are different. They’re so sad and pathetic and cute, and you have to make sure they don’t run a fever for too long so their organs don’t shut down. Having a sick toddler is like carrying around a new iphone without a case. A sick teenager is like having an otter box on your phone. Sure you want to take care of it, but it’s not as life or death.

 Anyway, Stella was running a pretty high fever, so we let her sleep in our bed last night. At first she started off in the middle of the bed between Rach and me. Rach was angling for a back rub so she asked Stella if they could trade spots. 

Rach: Stella, can you and Daddy switch spots so he can rub my back?

Stella: No thanks. I like it here.

Rach: Stella?

Stella: No Daddy needs to rub my back.

 At this point Rach got up and went to the other side of the bed, putting me in the middle. Then I heard, “Babe, rub my back.” “No, Daddy, rub my back!” “Rub my back!” “No, mine!” So I did what any self-respecting father would do. I pretended to go to sleep. (Which was immediately followed by me actually going to sleep). The joke was on me, however, because at around midnight, I awoke to find myself the only one under the covers unable to move because they were both on top of the covers. I look to my right, and there is Rach’s face about 2 inches away from mine, breathing on me as if I was a mirror that she was about to wipe off. I look to my left, and there is Stella’s face, also 2 inches away from mine, breathing just the same. I felt like I was strapped to a gurney inside a hot air balloon. It wouldn’t have been as bad but I could actually hear the germs laughing and high-fiving as they left Stella’s mouth and flew into mine; the equivalent of the Syrian refugees being shown the red carpet to America just as I was trying to make my immune system great again.

 So I wiggle out from under the covers and Kung Fu Panda my way to the open side of the bed next to Stella. Since I had reached my maximum number of germ visas I decided to face away from Stella toward the outside of the bed. This would’ve been a great plan but I did not anticipate that Stella would be perfectly content being the big spoon. I outweigh her by close to 200 lbs. It would be like me trying to be the big spoon with a brontosaurus, but there she was, knees in my back and her feverish hand on my shoulder; inching closer and closer to the point that I couldn’t lay back flat without crushing her. She wasn’t so much trying to be the big spoon as she was trying to crawl inside me like a freezing rabbit trying to find warmth in a bear carcass. We 'slept' like that for a few hours until about 3am, Rach wakes me up and says “I think her fever spiked again. We have to find the thermometer.” This July we will have been married for ten years. I know good and well that ‘We need to find the thermometer’ actually means 'You need to get up and go look for the thermometer while I lay in bed and hollers out places for you to look."

I look in the medicine cabinet. It’s not there. I look in all of the bathrooms. It’s not there. I look in the medicine cabinet again. It’s not there again. Rach calls and wakes up our 18 year old Tori, who is sleeping in her dorm, because she may have been the last one to use it. She says check Stella’s night stand. I look there. It’s not there. I check under the bed. It’s not there. At this point I know that Rach won’t let me back in the bed until I find the stupid thermometer, but I’ve checked every rational place that it would be. So I just start checking random places, like under the kitchen sink, and in the silverware drawer, and behind the entertainment center. Rach finally comes downstairs and says she woke up our 13 year old Scarlett, and she said it’s in the medicine cabinet. I start to tell Rach that I checked the medicine cabinet 3 times already and it’s not in there, but just as I start to speak I see her walk to the medicine cabinet, open it, grab the thermometer, and shoot me a dirty look as she walks back upstairs. Dang. Now she’s thinking that I’m either a jerk or an idiot. Lucky for me I’m just an idiot. 

Her temperature is 102.5 so we pump her full of medicine and make sure it comes down to a non-organ-threatening level. Stella slept for the rest of the night and Rach and I were able to get a full 2 hours before we had to get the other kids ready for school. At this point in the story, I’m supposed to come up with some anecdote about how rewarding parenting can be. Or how at some point in the night Stella groaned and said, “Daddy?.....”, “Yes sweetie?”, “…..I love you.” (which really did happen) And my heart melted and made it all worth it. Or I should say something about how she’s only going to be little like this for a short time, and we need to enjoy it because we’re going to blink and she’ll be grown. I’d like to tell you that we learned a valuable lesson, or blah, blah, blah. But I can’t. I’m tired, and the only thing in my brain right now is one of those empty cloud thought bubble emoji’s. Or maybe the zzz emoji followed by the sick face emoji followed by the gun emoji. I need to stop sign emoji. Praying hands emoji for me.