Bah Humbug!

It will be an interesting Christmas this year. Malia has been battling a losing war with a cold. She started with the sniffles on Friday. That escalated to an occasional cough on Saturday. By Sunday, it was a definite throaty cough and Monday, the nose faucet was at full blast.

That takes us to today. Tuesday. She's got a chesty sound to her breathing, the nose is still dripping and the cough is a constant companion. Taken as a whole, it's a run of the mill, pain in the butt cold. BUT this is not the usual cold. I have never seen her more ornery, more bad tempered, more bratty than she was today. At the Academy of Sciences she refused to ride in the stroller, she refused to walk -- she only wanted to be carried. While she napped. We have a Phil and Ted E3. It folds flat. It's very comfy for napping. It's like a hammock. But no, only Dad's arms would do. She threw a fit of epic portions when Truong refused to carry her to nap. It was so loud, so leg and body flailing that I walked out of the aquarium, with her strapped in the stroller screaming like it was a bed of broken glass, and sat in the corner by the bathroom so she could compose herself. The thing was... she never composed herself. She'd quiet down to rest for another bout of screaming. I got a lot of "Oh my gosh! That was loud!" from passing strangers. It was a little embarrassing. It continued on the way home until she passed out, still heaving from crying. It was worst tantrum I had ever seen from her.

We get home and she's like white on rice to a parent. Mostly Truong since I had to take care of Taede. Wherever he went, she was a monkey on his back. When we switched so Truong could shower, Malia wouldn't even let me go make dinner for her, she was so clingy. That was when I realized just how out of sorts she was. She's normally a fiercely independent child so to have her so suction cupped on me was a little worrisome.

Add on to her clinginess, was her dinner. That went down the hatch then back up. All over her Pj's. Ugh. My kids aren't thrower-uppers so I was thoroughly disgusted. After the mess of dinner, she wanted to lie on the couch. And there she lay: on her tummy, hiney in the air, by herself on a couch that sits 4-5 people. She would scream "Go away! GO AWAY! Leave me alone!" to anyone who made the mistake of coming near. Sheesh.

This was the worse I've ever seen her with a cold. I went to check on her and discovered... a fever. Crimony, can it get any worse? No, don't answer that. I don't want Murphy to hear it and make it a Law.

I usually carry everything but the kitchen sink when we travel. Truong hates loading the car with all my junk because I pack so much "what if we need it?" stuff. So this time, I made a concerted effort to lighten the load. That meant no thermometer, no medicines, no snot sucker. Of course, this would be the one and only trip that I would need all that stuff. Luckily, I didn't clear out the glove compartment of the car: I had a brand new bottle of Infant Tylenol stashed in there. So I dosed her up good and got her to bed at 7:00pm. Poor baby girl. Hopefully she gets better soon otherwise we're going to leave for home early.

And poor Taede. With his sister loving on him so much, he's got the awful cough and congestion. Hopefully the fever will skip him but with our luck, it's just a matter of time.

In thinking back, trying to figure out where she got sick, because my kids don't get sick often, I realized where I made my mistake. I scheduled her flu shot on Wednesday, 2 days before leaving for our trip.

Bad Mommy.