Why Moms Can't Get Sick (Or Take Medicine)

This post is purely for your entertainment, dear Godchildren. It may serve as a reminder that your Godmother is not only human, but that she regularly needs large doses of humility.

I have been sick with an ugly cold all week. After canceling kids' activities, quarantining the house, and imposing strict handwashing rules on my cooped-up kids, today I ventured to break out of our self-imposed prison to bring Noah to his violin lesson.  So I loaded up on tea, cough drops, and most importantly, Alka-Seltzer Cold & Flu Multi-Symptom. (I like how it fizzes in the glass, and I hate swallowing pills!)  I sort of forgot that cold and flu meds make me a little spacey.

Off we went. 

Except Noah's teacher didn't show up. Darn it. I even put on mascara in an attempt to not look like a plague survivor. 

After waiting for her to show up for 40 minutes I had the bright idea to give her a call. No answer. So I left a message and we headed to the supermarket for bread and more cold and flu meds. 

Grocery stores are notoriously places where, if I haven't yet been sufficiently humiliated, I can make up for it. 

As I stood in my post-medicine stupor staring at too many options for hand soap (foaming, not foaming, vanilla + peppermint scent, peppermint + holly scent, Christmas scent, organic, non-paraben, glycerin-free, lavender and chamomile, bar soap, soap on a string, pump soap.....) I notice out of the corner of my eye that Noah is curious about the price of something in the freezer case. So curious in fact, that he is climbing it. 

Now I'm sure somewhere in my brain it registered that this might not be a good idea, but that thought took a while to make it into my conscious mind, especially since my head was still trying to figure out what paraben-free, glycerin-free, fragrance-free, gluten-free, milk-free soap was actually made of. Plus, let's face it, I know he is a good climber, so my brain obviously didn't register "danger." (Trust me, when Mommy brains sense danger its like a full on possession by body-building-ninja and moms can leap tall building and take out anyone and anything in their path to save their kid from said danger). 

Anyway, as I am slowly coming to the realization that I should tell Noah to not climb the freezer case, an elderly lady shoots me the look of death and says "is that YOUR child?"  

You know that saying, "If you can't say something nice, don't say anything at all?"  Yeah, that's my life motto. Because in my head I had already responded, "No, is he yours?"  followed by "what child?" and "I leave my children locked in the car with no heat or air while I shop."  So instead of replying to the woman I blinked at her slowly as my Alka-Selter mind caught up to the present situation and shook off the soap question. (who needs ingredient-free soap, anyway?) and I looked at Noah who was quite proudly announcing what the price of the eggnog in the freezer case was as he nimbly stretched across it. "My son could be a gymnast. A mountain climbing gymnast," I proudly thought to myself. Then I blinked at the lady one more time, still couldn't come up with something worth actually saying, smiled at her, and then said, "Thanks for telling me, Noah, lets go get cheese."  And my mountain climbing gymnast extracted himself quite quickly from the freezer case and grabbed my hand to go find his favorite food.  

Did I mention that we went to the store with Ben dressed as a Knight? And that he was speaking in an English accent pretending to be a Dwarf a la Lord of the Rings who was leading an expedition against the Orc army? I may or may not have asked him to "command his troops to follow him as he protected His Lady, Queen of the Dwarves, as she hunted food for her people." (I always wanted to be Snow White....)

Did I also mention that Noah had "I love my Mom and Dad" written on his FOREHEAD at the time of this encounter? (His siblings tattooed him and he was so proud of his statement of love for his mom and dad he refused to have it wiped off. "But Mommy, I want EVERYONE to know I love you!" How can you argue with that? Apparently when I'm sick, I can't.)

After our little excursion, which, while it may sound rather extraordinary, was actually pretty normal (for us), we headed home for lunch. 

Keep in mind that at this point I feel rather sick, am coming off the Cold and Flu daze, and have a pounding headache. 

We get home and as everyone is getting situated I walk into the kitchen to find children in varying states of "don't let mom see" panic. What did they not want me to see? Just the blue tempera paint smeared all over my floor. How did it get there you ask? Because a curious, unnamed child (They close ranks when they think they are all to blame) wanted to know what it was. So of course, he squeezed it. And when you see a giant blob of blue paint on the floor, you try to clean it up. With your hands. So you smear it. And well, after that, its like finger painting and the more you try to "clean it up" the more it smears. Everywhere.

This is one of those many motherly moments where you have a choice: Get angry, or realize that your children are very imperfect little people whose best intentions almost always end in messes. I chose the latter (its a habit now) and decided the silver lining was that I now had a totally legit excuse to make my kids mop and clean my floor. #winning

I managed to get lunch made and served for everyone, and was delegating clean up duties when Noah decided he needed more pickles, so he perched himself inside the fridge and tried to open the pickle jar. Well. The good news is he did. The bad news is he opening it with such force that pickle juice spilled all over the fridge. All over the floor, and all over him. 

By now my head was approaching migraine territory so I dutifully took more medicine. Then I noticed that the pickle juice was mixing nicely with the blue paint. I may have had a fleeting thought that "it looked pretty" as it swirled. Until I remembered it was on my floor. I extracted Noah from the fridge and we traipsed to the bathroom to give him a bath (silver lining here: no more forehead tattoo!).  

After cleansing himself and my bathroom floor (Yay, I don't have to mop that either today!) Noah was once again dressed and ready to......make crystals on my couch. Yeah, not sure how that happened exactly but in the time it took me to wipe down the bathroom he had managed to find Gabe's crystal growing kit and got down to business on the nearest surface that was a sufficient height. 

I had to make a split second decision to either start throwing a toddler style tantrum and yelling "I DON'T FEEL GOOD EVERYBODY STOP!" or brewing more tea and turning this into a science lesson. It was a hard decision. Really hard. 

Science won. 

We relocated to the Kitchen. 

And wouldn't you know, as soon as I said "school" no one thought crystal growing sounded that exciting anymore. Which was fine with me, because I had a floor that needed to be washed! 

So there you have it. The inner thoughts, the daily struggles, and the reasons why moms simply can't get sick (or apparently take Cold and Flu Medicine).

Love,

your (sniffling, coughing, feverish) fairy Godmother

PS: yes, you were supposed to laugh at this.