Of Sickness And Skininess

Every year from October to April, parents of young kids are shivering with terror when we see a snotty, cough-y, or sneezy child near our own. Entire classrooms of preschoolers sound like colonies of barking seals. One cold is on it's way out of our children as another is on it's way in. Nights are spent listening to coughing and whining, leaving parents and kids everywhere cranky and tired.

We are no different in This Heavenly Life. Mia is currently on her 7,000th cold of this winter. Hopefully it'll be the last. This cold is the worst one so far, because it's accompanied by a deep chest cough and a high fever.

What makes it even more fun, is that we're having a beautiful play-outside kind of week and Mia's sleeping through it. She slept from 7:30 Sunday night to 11:00 Monday morning, napped from 2 to 5, then went back to sleep at 8:00 last night and is still in bed as I type this at 9 AM.

She would have slept even more, I think, if I hadn't woken her up to go see the doctor yesterday. The nurse on the phone was concerned about flu or pneumonia, which got my worry up, so we trekked into town for a visit.

Our regular doctor was busy with appointments, so we let a stand-in check Mia's ears, nose, lungs, and throat. All was fine. Just a cold. And a twenty dollar co-pay.

My favorite moment of the visit was when the doctor was listening to Mia's chest with her stethoscope. The doctor looked at me and said "Her stomach is growling an awful lot, she's hungry mom..." Her eyebrows were raised, her voice was chastising. I defended myself by telling her that Mia had been sleeping for the past 15 hours. And hadn't been interested in eating for the past day and a half.

Well the disinterest in eating part may have been fudged a little. That's been going on for a year.

I promised to get some food in her as soon as we got home, if she'd eat. She did: dry toast and applesauce. By the look on the doctor's face earlier, she probably would have been upset with me for not trying to get something more caloric into Mia's hungry little bony body.

Oh well. I can't carry a family history around with me that proves Mia's genetic predisposition to being skinny. I figure I'm walking testimony. The trouble may start when I gain weight as the years pass, though.

Then I'll pull out pictures of myself at Mia's age and say "Look! Rib cage? Check. Knobby knees? Check. Visible spine? Check."

She's her mommy's daughter.