Late Nights With Sick Kids

Caden has been sick. He has been struggling with ear infections that we can't seem to get cleared up. He had just finished one antibiotic the other day and I thought he was ok. That night when I got home from work at midnight he woke up crying. We discovered that it was his ear hurting that was inducing this fit of screaming that was lacking any use of "BIG BOY" words. I gave him Motrin, loved him, and put him back to bed.

We visited the doctor the next morning and he was telling us that this is the third kid in today that was complaining of ear pain and that the other two did not have anything wrong. This was after he just got done telling me that maybe I should trade my child in since he was defective. (He was trying to joke around with me, you know, trying to lighten things up since Caden is sick quite a bit in the cold and flu season. It still rubbed me wrong.) After looking in the ear that hurt he said, "oh, this is bad". So now we are on another antibiotic.

Anyway, you know how it is when your kids are sick. Things kind of get off schedule a little or just seem weird. You stay home and try to take it easy and let the poor kid get some rest. Well, that is what we did yesterday. Caden had no desire to nap so we watched movies and played. By the time we got to making and eating dinner Caden was bouncing off the walls. I took him to the YMCA to let him get a little energy out in hopes that we could get to bed and get back to our regular routine. This all went well and Caden was bathed and in bed sleeping by 8:00pm.

It was great! I enjoyed some quiet time to myself while he was sleeping and Mike was at school. Mike came home, we had some time together to chat a little and then we went to bed. I was going for the whole everyone would sleep through the night plan and we were doing quite well at accomplishing that until about 4 am. Yes people, 4 AM. That is when I woke up to the sound of one little boy sniffing. I rolled over and was trying to go back to sleep when I heard a little voice say, "OOOO OOO. Chugga Chugga Choo Choo. All aboard!" Mike and I just kind of laughed and tried to be very quiet. (If Caden knows we are awake he thinks it is morning.)

Once again, I was trying to go back to sleep while listening to Caden get repositioned. All of a sudden I hear, "Mom, I need a snack!" This is a little boy that will not go to sleep if he is hungry, so I decided it would be much quicker to just get him something to eat. We got done with the snack and were on our way back to bed when he decided that he needed some more medicine. He told me, "Remember what the doctor said mom. Get plenty of rest and plenty of medicine!" This is when we had the little talk about we don't just take medicine because it tastes good. We only take it if something is hurting. Now that we established that the ear was hurting and we had our medicine we were ready to go back to bed again.

Right as I was drifting off to sleep I hear, "Mom, I want to come and sleep in your bed." I am not a big fan of the whole co-sleeping. Caden moves around in his sleep way to much and usually ends up telling me that I need to scoot over out of HIS space. :) What a little turkey. I told him no, but he was determined to come and cuttle in our bed with his big stuffed dog. (See picture below-this dog is bigger than Caden.)
I was finally able to get him back to bed and everyone sleeping again, but it was about an hour or so later. Needless to say, we are tired and a little ornery today. And now my sweet boy is zonked out on the couch.
Isn't he much cuter during the daytime hours?