Poor Sugarplum is on day 3 of a full blown cold. She started the first day with a stuffy nose and slight fever (around 99) day 2 she added a pretty intense cough and today we’ve got the runny nose. Luckily this is only the second cold she’s had in her entire life (the first was at her first Christmas time when she was about 5 months old) but because she can’t remember being sick before she doesn’t quite know how to handle it.
This morning she woke up and told me “Mommy, I’m still coughy” which prompted me to say “what?!?! Who gave you coffee?!?!?!” She was not amused and her comment proves how unfamiliar she is with being sick. She thought she would just magically wake up and feel better and doesn’t understand why the sickness isn’t going away. She is tolerating the cold well and is generally in good spirits but when she does get upset she goes off the deep end and is reverting back to behaviors that we haven’t seen in awhile. In the past 3 days she has had 5 huge crying, screaming hysterical fits each lasting 10 minutes or more.
She also has never had to learn how to politely cover her cough since she’s not had a coughing illness before. I keep reminding her to cover with her elbow or cough into her shoulder so her hands stay as germ-free as possible but she usually forgets but at least she is trying to cough into her hands.
Sugarplum’s amazing health, though, isn’t a rarity for our family. I don’t think anyone got a cold last year or since Sugarplum’s first cold at 5 months, in fact (which was nearly 2 years ago). Aside from the stomach bug we all got in February (see “The Bowl Brigade”) and Sugarplum’s throwing up adventure in August (see “Back to the Bowl”), the only other family illness we’ve had since our last cold experience was a bout of pink eye our last spring in Ireland a year and a half ago.
We unfortunately haven’t always been so healthy. With me working at a childcare center, poor Honeybun was a pretty sickly little baby. Though she wasn’t sick as often as many of her peers (I attribute this to my being exposed to the same germs and breastfeeding her and therefore sharing my antibodies with her) she still had a few different colds as well as one unexplainable high fever and was into the pediatrician quite frequently her first winter.
Now with Honeybun in kindergarten and ballet and Sugarplum in gymnastics as well as my teaching many different groups of children, I know we will be exposed to a lot this winter but I’m hoping Doodle follows Sugarplum’s healthy start instead of Honeybun’s sickly start.
