Sick days are no fun

Poor Caleb.....

While we were running yesterday, we heard a very loud motor coming our way. "What's that?" Caleb asked. "I think it's a motorcycle," I responded. Wrong. It was an oil dripping, air polluting, noise machine headed toward us (don't worry...we were on the sidewalk). I stopped for a minute, thinking the car would pass on by and we wouldn't have to breathe the fumes or hear the blast of loud, obnoxious engine for too long. Guess what the driver did.....he pulled over to the side of the road to get his mail out of the mailbox. So there we were right behind the nasty fumes with his stupid car idling (my irritation with him is increasing as I write this). Then he pauses to look at me like "why are you standing in front of MY house?" before he finally pulls around into his driveway finally giving us some relief from his lung irritating, eardrum busting stupid car. There we were left in a cloud of fumes...both from the car and from me....and Caleb was yelling, "yuuuuuck....cough...ewwww....blahhhhhhh....cough". You get the point, right? He did it so loudly that another man out for a walk down the street from us gave me the look. You know, the one like, is your child ok and what is he doing? I explained to him that my child didn't like the car.

After surviving the atomic car, we passed by a house with a burned yard. I thought it was dirt at first so I didn't think twice about passing it. But as we got closer, we could smell the charred grass. "Yuuuuuck....cough...ewwww....blahhhhhhh....cough..what is it?," questions Caleb. At this point, I'm wanting to get away from the smell ASAP so I'm running as hard as we can....of course it would be going up a hill...at the end of my run when I'm good and tired.....with Caleb going crazy trying to figure out why the air around him is so unpleasant today.

So last night he couldn't sleep for coughing so much. I did my whole respiratory therapy/nurse assessment on him, decided he wasn't wheezing and gave him some all-natural, homeopathic cough medicine. Didn't work. He kept coughing. Jason went to check on him around midnight and found that--------stop reading paragraph here if you have a weak stomach, proceed immediately to the next paragraph--------Caleb had coughed so much that he vomited all over himself. So it's midnight and I have to give Caleb a bath and now scrub his clothes. Ewwwww! I'm so proud of Jason for not gagging, vomiting, or passing out. He actually helped me. Of course, he wasn't the one that had a vomit soaked Caleb asking for "hugs, Mama, hugs". That's ok, though. That's what moms do, right? We hug our little babies when they need hugs no matter what (although I did wipe as much off as I could as he was lunging towards me and quickly pulled a towel up between us to shield my clothing from his). Caleb said to me "it's ax-si-dent mama". Oh, I just wanted to scoop him up and hold him all night. I didn't care how tired I was or how dirty he was.

I gave him some more medicine...not the crappy stuff I gave before, but some stuff that really worked and turned on his humidifier and after a few more coughing episodes, he finally went to sleep. Jason stayed home with him today and worked from home while I went to work. I hated leaving him here. I just have to keep reminding myself that once the initial training is over, it will be worth it. I do still really, really love my job...I just hate leaving my baby, especially when he is sick! He is asleep right now and I so badly want to go pick him up and cuddle with him, but I won't because he is finally getting some much needed sleep.

Poor Caleb. I actually got him to eat spinach, carrots, tomatoes, broccoli and strawberries for dinner....ahhhh why couldn't this happen on a day when he eats a bunch of junk?