I am in day five of being home with my kids, who have been sick since last weekend. Various combinations of the three kids have been home depending on where they are in their illness - just as my son returned to school, my younger daughter fell ill, while my older daughter has held consistent and been home all week. Some type of flu is running rampant through my kids’ school where nearly half of the students were out last week with high fevers, sore throats and coughs. I was feeling very smug as my kids remained healthy last week (thinking it must have been because of my militant hand washing instructions and admonishments to stay away from the water fountains) when of course it became our turn this week. And unfortunately, I think it is nearly impossible to keep siblings from passing certain viruses to each other, no matter how much Lysol you spray or distance you try and keep between them.

I feel lucky that I am able to be home with them when they are sick, but while I pride myself on being a pretty calm and even keeled parent most of the time, I am a worrier when the kids are sick. I literally worry myself sick. My younger daughter had a temperature over 103 and while my doctor told me not to worry unless she as having trouble breathing, listless, not drinking etc., I immediately headed to the Internet and googled “kids and fevers.” Someone take my computer away.

So, what have we been doing? Besides endless hours of Suite Life on Deck (my least favorite kids’ show - totally ridiculous) and Sponge Bob (at least humorous), we have managed to have some fun, and I have gotten some things done that I wouldn’t have attacked unless trapped in the house. We have done some Halloween crafts we found online; familyfun.com has some great and easy crafts on their website. We made these cute spiders in no time.

Article continues below...

I decided to go after some house projects I’d been putting off for literally years. I had not printed out a single photo since 2006 when I got a digital camera. I went through every photo on my hard drive, had them printed out, and the kids and I put them into photo albums. This was a great way to pass the time. Even more exciting - I cleaned the oven. Don’t hold this against me - I have never cleaned my oven. Who knew the inside wasn’t black, but blue? Next up, linen closet, which hasn’t been organized since we moved in in 2001.

Here’s hoping you and your families stay healthy as the long flu season is just beginning, but off to a bang around here.

• 2 Comments
• More by this Author

This entry was posted on Thursday, October 22nd, 2009 at 7:52 am and is filed under Blogroll, Friends, Fun things to do with kids, Kids. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.