Microbe Manager

So this has been the end of our week. Eight ounces of cough medicine, three hundred twenty-six tissues, two cans of chicken noodle soup, two checks for fever, and probably not an hour on the little hand where we weren't up for one of the two kids. Ryan had another up-at-1:25 couldn't breathe-and-upset-about-it coughing cement sinus fit, maybe thirty minutes after Ainsley had been up with Erin, or as I like to call her, Big Ben, bleating every hour on the hour. I had mistakenly taken NyQuil Friday night, which meant I was about as loopy as a ferris wheel when Ainsley asked me to try with her. I leaned up against the cold wall in the hallway, listening in, and, hearing nothing, I returned to bed, where she instantly started crying (Erin, not Ainsley, though she must have been close herself). That was Friday night. Saturday night, Erin was up from 1 till past 3, having to break a fever. I was finally able to get her to stay asleep in her crib, with the hands-on approach: put her down, and although she protests, if I'm lucky, she goes right back to sleep, with me holding a hand on her head and another on her belly or legs, just to let her know I'm still there. After a count to thirty or so, I'm able to start pulling one hand away, then the other, and finally get to straighten my back up and tiptoe away.
Perhaps she should get the NyQuil next cold.

To show how much the emphasis has been on the desnotting our children, today at breakfast Ainsley and I were getting sick of Ryan answering every request/command/question with "no." So I busted out a "Seinfeld" line on him: "You know what you can do with your 'no's? You can stuff 'em in a sack!"
"No," Ryan said. "You BLOW it."

The one saving grace is that each morning, and each afternoon, when Ainsley was able to get some zzzzs, I got to spend time with Erin, or both kids, by myself, which is a rarity. It was fun to hang out and watch cartoons and Def Leppard videos and eat Cheerios and practice crawling. I even busted out the ol' college-era synthesizer, letting both kids slap away the keyboard.

At any rate, the weekendendended on a high note, with the Redskins whupping up a can of openass on the Dallas Cowspurts. For the first time all weekend, Erin celebrated by actually sleeping through her first REM cycle.