Bittersweet: Part 2

So I get there for Christmas lunch and Cole actually tells me "night night" and asks for "rocky" which means to be rocked. So I rock him and he knocks out. I take him into Mimi's room and I lay him down and attempt to leave. He stirs so I decide to just skip lunch and lay with my baby boy and I notice he feels warm. I kinda dismiss it and a little later I check him again and he's getting warmer. We check his temperature with those underarm thermometers that take forever and we can't get an accurate reading because he's fussing now. I think at one point it reads 104.7 and we head home.

At home we check it with our thermal thermometer and it's just above 103, not good. So we give him Tylenol (you know it0the generic stuff), we try to put wet towels on him and then we get him in a tepid bath to bring his temperature down. He kicks and screams and cries out to us, meanwhile, Will and I and Gloria are all trying to appease him, dancing and singing, and jumping around like fools. This pretty much goes on for days, even today he had a fever. Went to see Dr. Johnson the day after Christmas and Cole had no strep or flu so we are just trying to stay on top of the fever with Tylenol and Motrin and some Ceron for the cough and congestion. It's when he sleeps that the fevers get out of hand. We finally figured that we have to be waking him every four hours to give him some meds because otherwise the fever gets out of control.

Despite all this heartache, I do have to say that Cole is taking his medicine very well. He freaks when he sees the dropper but when we put it into the little tsp vials we tell him it's juicy and he drinks it right up. He even asks for more! I have to thank Tammy for this genius idea. Goodness how it works. Now it's not foolproof. You can take a child to juice but you can't make him drink always. Sometimes he's so out of sorts with the fever that he just looks at it like the thought of lifting his little arm to take it is exhausting. His whole body is in pain, he whimpers and wants only to be held. My poor baby!

So just as I thought things were pretty bad at home with Cole sick, Will gets sick too. Cole is being very needy right now, and with reason, I'm pretty exhausted. I have Gloria's help but Cole wants his mommy right now so it's 24/7 Cole. Then Will gets sick and I'm all focused on Cole. I dismiss it for a cold, a 24 hour bug, it can't be that bad. That was on Sunday. He went to see the Dr. last night and guess what? Will has the freakin flu! I guess my sister was right when she said I had nothing to offer emotionally. I was too wrapped up in Cole and myself that I completely overlooked Will. So I went out last night at 11:30 into South McAllen to fill Will's prescription. I felt sooo bad. Did you know that Lee's Pharmacy is open until midnight, 7 days a week? How wonderful is that? I was in and out in 9 minutes!

Pray for the boys tonight: they have been under the weather for days!