The Bug's Bug

I knew it had to happen eventually and I hate to jinx myself, but I have to say, as illnesses go, Luke's first one was kind of a walk in the park. He had a very grumpy day on Wednesday, which I chalked down to the fact that we had gone to a La Leche League meeting, which threw off his nap schedule. And when I say "very grumpy day," what I mean is that he wanted to play on the living room floor with the coffee table. Sounds fine, right? Except I wasn't allowed to interact with him in any way. So for an entire hour, if I so much as looked in his direction, he wailed. Still, I'm sure you don't understand the problem because hey, that's an hour of the baby amusing himself, right? Except that during this hour? If I tried to get up off the floor, he yelled. If I tried to sit on the floor and fold one of the small mountains of laundry that had accumulated, he hollered. If I tried to knit or eat a snack or read a book, he broke down into pitiful tears. Which means that for an hour, I sat thinking about ALL THE THINGS I should have been doing instead.

Needless to say, this behavior is not normal for my kid. Usually, he likes interaction, likes being held and played with and talked to and growled at. I mean, the whole not-getting-to-fold-my-laundry thing was nothing new, but this was the first time that I was not folding laundry because I was sitting on the floor and staring at YET ANOTHER EPISODE of a home improvement show.

But other than that weirdness, he wasn't acting sick. No sneezing. No coughing. No runny nose. So when he was still awake 2 hours after his normal bedtime, I was done. Done with a capital D-O-N-E. I was convinced that a demon had taken over my sweet child's body for the sole purpose of TORTURING ME. Until I realized that his forehead felt warm...and his hands...and his feet...so I quickly whipped out the thermometer that has been waiting on a table in his room for the past six months and sure enough, he had a fever. A low fever, to be sure, but a fever nonetheless.

So of course, I took that as the perfect opportunity to hold and cuddle him all night long (why, yes, I AM opportunistic, thank-you-for-asking), which is why I know this fact: Luke is a really weird sick person. For one thing, he whistles in his sleep like a cartoon character. For another, all through the night and for a good part of the next day, he would get really, really hot and then, 15 minutes later, be cold and clammy again. On Thursday, every time he felt warm, I braced myself for the fussing and the whining that I expected to come with a sick child, only to find that a feverish Luke is actually a very charming and pleasant Luke. Who knew? And by Thursday night, he was completely back to normal again.

I, on the other hand, have a sore throat, a runny nose, and a headache that has been with me for the past two days. Because apparently, my immune system feels that it already helped one person through this illness and really, it deserves a few days off now.