Make Love, Not Germs
Life goes on when I get sick. The kids still do everything that kids do. They eat, poop, play, cry, and nap, usually in that order. I take care of myself as best I can, and let the kids do what they do, intervening only when someone is about to fall from someplace really high, or pull something from the refrigerator that’s really messy.
Life stops when the kids get sick. They still do everything kids do, but with a lot more crying at the expense of most other activities. The pooping, sadly, continues unabated.
The more the children cry, the more time I spend tending to their needs and the less time I spend horizontal on the couch tending to my sinus’s needs. With this in mind, I take every precaution I can imagine to keep the germs from spreading and ensure my illness dies in my body. Maybe the pediatrician was right when he responded with laughter to a question about preventing colds from spreading, but it’s worth a try.
The biggest preventive measure I take is no longer sharing food with the kids. They cannot eat off my plate; I have to finish my bowl of ice cream by myself no matter how much it pains me. They cannot eat my broccoli either. Usually I heap a pile of delicious steamed broccoli on my plate, and use the same fork I eat with to drop spears into my children’s open mouths as they surround me. I use the same principle birds use to feed their young, except that most people would find regurgitated worms more appetizing than steamed broccoli. Fortunately, my children understand the value of broccoli in balancing a diet that otherwise consists of milk, Goldfish, and whatever whipped topping they can sneak from the fridge while I blow my nose.
Now I dump the kids’ broccoli on a clean plate, and dish it to them with a clean fork. Doing so creates extra dishes to wash, and it forces me to protect two plates of broccoli from three sets of prying hands, but if it keeps my germs from invading their bodies, it’s worth the extra effort.
I also wash my hands more frequently now. That’s significant since I already washed my hands after every diaper changing, an estimated 849,530 times daily. Add a hand washing after every nose blowing, and I spend most of my day in the bathroom washing, drying, and refilling the soap bottle again. If my hands are no longer moist from the last hand washing, it’s probably time to return to the sink. All that soap makes my hands look and feel like I just spent all day buckling kids into car seats in the dead of winter, but it’s worth it if the germs stay with me.
I’ve stopped the pre-sleep kisses, at least on the face. No more pecks on the cheek, they now go within the hairline. Ideally, they go to the back of the head, far from any germ-receptive orifices, but still similar enough to human contact to minimize the need to talk to a therapist 20 years from now about abandonment issues.
Of course, none of this is effective. I occasionally forget which fork feeds which mouth. I can’t wash my hands constantly. My clammy breath still permeates their airspace.
Abbie caught my cold and is currently snotting up the house. Somewhere, a pediatrician is laughing.
Life stops when the kids get sick. They still do everything kids do, but with a lot more crying at the expense of most other activities. The pooping, sadly, continues unabated.
The more the children cry, the more time I spend tending to their needs and the less time I spend horizontal on the couch tending to my sinus’s needs. With this in mind, I take every precaution I can imagine to keep the germs from spreading and ensure my illness dies in my body. Maybe the pediatrician was right when he responded with laughter to a question about preventing colds from spreading, but it’s worth a try.
The biggest preventive measure I take is no longer sharing food with the kids. They cannot eat off my plate; I have to finish my bowl of ice cream by myself no matter how much it pains me. They cannot eat my broccoli either. Usually I heap a pile of delicious steamed broccoli on my plate, and use the same fork I eat with to drop spears into my children’s open mouths as they surround me. I use the same principle birds use to feed their young, except that most people would find regurgitated worms more appetizing than steamed broccoli. Fortunately, my children understand the value of broccoli in balancing a diet that otherwise consists of milk, Goldfish, and whatever whipped topping they can sneak from the fridge while I blow my nose.
Now I dump the kids’ broccoli on a clean plate, and dish it to them with a clean fork. Doing so creates extra dishes to wash, and it forces me to protect two plates of broccoli from three sets of prying hands, but if it keeps my germs from invading their bodies, it’s worth the extra effort.
I also wash my hands more frequently now. That’s significant since I already washed my hands after every diaper changing, an estimated 849,530 times daily. Add a hand washing after every nose blowing, and I spend most of my day in the bathroom washing, drying, and refilling the soap bottle again. If my hands are no longer moist from the last hand washing, it’s probably time to return to the sink. All that soap makes my hands look and feel like I just spent all day buckling kids into car seats in the dead of winter, but it’s worth it if the germs stay with me.
I’ve stopped the pre-sleep kisses, at least on the face. No more pecks on the cheek, they now go within the hairline. Ideally, they go to the back of the head, far from any germ-receptive orifices, but still similar enough to human contact to minimize the need to talk to a therapist 20 years from now about abandonment issues.
Of course, none of this is effective. I occasionally forget which fork feeds which mouth. I can’t wash my hands constantly. My clammy breath still permeates their airspace.
Abbie caught my cold and is currently snotting up the house. Somewhere, a pediatrician is laughing.
posted by Matt at
11:16 PM
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