For the past week, our household has been dealing with the dreaded “s” word that seems to be lurking everywhere in the winter: sickness.
LJ has been sick for almost a week now but I feel like we’re finally seeing the light at the end of the tunnel. His runny nose is clearing up, his cough is disappearing, and his appetite is coming back. It’s crazy to me how much our world is rocked when the littlest member of our family isn’t his normal self.
I think it’s easy to look at social media and think that everyone has is together, but the truth is, we see an incomplete picture. We see a highlight reel. We see the best days. It’s pretty rare to see the struggles, the difficulties, and the low points. Today I’m changing that and sharing a little bit of what life has looked like us for the past week. We’ve been off our game, we’ve had to roll with the punches, and we’ve gone through a lot of Kleenex.
My brain is kind of all over the place right now, so I’m just going to share a few thoughts on sicks days. Let’s roll with it, shall we?
Sick Day Thoughts
Food = food. In an ideal world, LJ will eat a healthy balanced meal 3x/day. In the real world, toddlers are picky so I do what I can to get a fruit or veggie in as often as I can. In the sick day world, we go with a “food is food” approach and whatever he is willing to eat is great. When I’m sick, my appetite changes so of course LJ’s does too when he’s feeling sick. If this means he eats a yogurt and goldfish, great. He ate something! If this means he eats applesauce and two blueberries, great. If all he wants is pasta noodles and a roll, fine. We focus on getting him to drink liquids and eat as much as he can and I don’t stress about what the food actually is.
The snuggle is real. Sick days mean we stay in our pajamas or other comfy, soft clothing. We get out blankets, we use the pacifier, we just get cozy. I’ll be honest, this is the part of sick days that I actually love.
TV “rules” relax. Honestly, Justin and I don’t have any established rules with LJ. In an ideal world, LJ would be engaged with his surroundings and we would never need the TV. Ha! In the real world, we do use the TV as a tool to occupy LJ for brief periods of time when we need to get something accomplished or distract him so we can trim his fingernails or something. In the sick world, we snuggle up on the couch and enjoy The Octonauts or Daniel Tiger without worrying about imposing a limit. Sometimes this even lulls him to sleep and he’ll just sleep on me.
Grandmas are amazing. My mom was able to come over one day and help out and this was such a huge blessing. She watched LJ so I could clean the long-overdue bathroom, tackle my laundry mountain, and make it to my cycling class. I was so thankful to be able to get some things done and know LJ was still getting lots of loving attention.
We do what we can and don’t stress the rest. I’ve previously posted how I keep up with my cleaning routine, workout regimen, work-from-home job, etc. On sick days, these routines are still helpful because I have an ingrained system for what to do (like immediately start my work-from-home job when LJ goes down for a nap). That being said, I do what I can and I don’t allow myself to stress out or feel bad about what doesn’t get done. I didn’t do my daily cleaning task for several days in a row. I wasn’t able to make it to the gym for bootcamp at all because I couldn’t take LJ to the childcare. It is what it is and it was fine. We all survived even though the kitchen wasn’t clean. 😉
Now that it seems like we’re on the other side and things are improving, we’ll be able to slowly get back into our routine. I think I’ll appreciate it a lot more now that we’ve had a week of being “off” and I’ll especially be glad to see LJ return to his usual happy, energetic toddler self.
What are your tricks for managing sick days?
simplify the chaos 