"They love! They share! They share and love and share!"
The good news: Abbie is recovering well from her unfortunate cold and is close to normal. The bad news: I now have her cold. With all the snot and drool I had to wipe up, I knew it was just a matter of time before I caught it. I’ve felt this thing slowly coming on for several days now. Saturday I woke up with a tickle in my throat that disappeared as the morning progressed. Sunday the tickle stayed in my throat all day, and progressed until last night when I could officially label it a “sore throat.” I’m now on a strict regimen of throat lozenges and throat spray to keep the pain down to a dull ache, similar to the pain one might feel from hearing pieces of a Tom Cruise interview playing in the background.
The strange thing about whatever germs are presently attacking me is they’re affecting me in a completely way from Abbie. Aside from a raging sore throat and a slight up tick in mucus, I feel pretty normal. Sure, I’m tired most of the day, but I spend my time chasing a sick 13-month-old around the house, so like I said, I feel pretty normal. In Abbie, the germs caused a mass of snot to gather in her sinuses. She’s had snottier colds, but this one still plugged her nose to the point where I had to use the nasal aspirator to clean her out a few times.* I also had to affix a bib around her neck to soak up the drool that comes as a byproduct of her temporary mouth breathing ways. My cold has left my nasal passages pretty clear, and I don’t drool any more than usual. It has left my voice scratchy, though, which causes all sorts of problems. This cold makes me warble and squeak while I sing, and lullabies generally lose their effect if I sound too goofy to make a child sleepy. It also hurts to talk, and that’s not a pleasant thing to fight through when I’m trying to expose her to as much language as possible to encourage her to talk. The pain keeps our reading sessions short, so I need to find alternate ways to entertain her. Vocally scolding her when she misbehaves hurts more since I have to growl admonishments, but I could probably save my voice by recording “don’t bite” and “don’t eat dog food” and replaying them at the appropriate times. The only bright side I found is I can take my voice many hertz lower, which opens up a whole world of new sounds to make for her, like the collected works of Barry White.
I also feel generally crummy, but I do my best to fight through it. Nevertheless, my mood finds ways to manifest itself. Some of Abbieupdate’s more observant readers have noticed an alarming surge in typos on this site recently. I’ll just have to pop another throat lozenge and buckle down to ensure the high quality of writing my loyal readers have come to expect expect.
* Long tangent alert: Babies seem to have a reputation in popular culture of bringing much joy along with some minor annoyances like dirty diapers and nighttime feedings. To that I say, “baby spit.” Suctioning out a young child with a nasal aspirator is one of the most traumatizing experiences I can imagine, for her and me, and I know traumatizing after spending a summer detassling corn. To find any joy in suctioning out a young child, you have to really love kids, or possibly really hate them. Also, nighttime feedings are much worse than the vaguely humorous way television generally portrays them, but that’s another tangent.
The strange thing about whatever germs are presently attacking me is they’re affecting me in a completely way from Abbie. Aside from a raging sore throat and a slight up tick in mucus, I feel pretty normal. Sure, I’m tired most of the day, but I spend my time chasing a sick 13-month-old around the house, so like I said, I feel pretty normal. In Abbie, the germs caused a mass of snot to gather in her sinuses. She’s had snottier colds, but this one still plugged her nose to the point where I had to use the nasal aspirator to clean her out a few times.* I also had to affix a bib around her neck to soak up the drool that comes as a byproduct of her temporary mouth breathing ways. My cold has left my nasal passages pretty clear, and I don’t drool any more than usual. It has left my voice scratchy, though, which causes all sorts of problems. This cold makes me warble and squeak while I sing, and lullabies generally lose their effect if I sound too goofy to make a child sleepy. It also hurts to talk, and that’s not a pleasant thing to fight through when I’m trying to expose her to as much language as possible to encourage her to talk. The pain keeps our reading sessions short, so I need to find alternate ways to entertain her. Vocally scolding her when she misbehaves hurts more since I have to growl admonishments, but I could probably save my voice by recording “don’t bite” and “don’t eat dog food” and replaying them at the appropriate times. The only bright side I found is I can take my voice many hertz lower, which opens up a whole world of new sounds to make for her, like the collected works of Barry White.
I also feel generally crummy, but I do my best to fight through it. Nevertheless, my mood finds ways to manifest itself. Some of Abbieupdate’s more observant readers have noticed an alarming surge in typos on this site recently. I’ll just have to pop another throat lozenge and buckle down to ensure the high quality of writing my loyal readers have come to expect expect.
* Long tangent alert: Babies seem to have a reputation in popular culture of bringing much joy along with some minor annoyances like dirty diapers and nighttime feedings. To that I say, “baby spit.” Suctioning out a young child with a nasal aspirator is one of the most traumatizing experiences I can imagine, for her and me, and I know traumatizing after spending a summer detassling corn. To find any joy in suctioning out a young child, you have to really love kids, or possibly really hate them. Also, nighttime feedings are much worse than the vaguely humorous way television generally portrays them, but that’s another tangent.
posted by Matt at
9:22 PM
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