Monday was defined for me primarily by sleep. Notably, the lack of it the previous night.
Henry came down with a pretty nasty cold over the weekend. Of course, living in the age of COVID, anytime there are sniffles or anything like that, our minds immediately leap to, “what if???” But in Henry’s case, it was pretty obviously just a cold. He was really stuffy, runny nose, etc. No fever or other troubling symptoms. Just a lot, a lot, a lot of snot.
The biggest symptom was that, like an old man, he walked around the house holding a Kleenex at all time, and leaving them scattered all over the place. He hasn’t really gotten the hang of the idea of blowing his nose, so he is constantly dabbing at it, like some kind of foppish southern dandy with a snuff problem.
Anyway, the poor guy hasn’t been feeling well or sleeping that great, so I crawled into bed with him on Sunday night. Around 2am, Amelia came in also, wide awake and asking if she could watch something.
“No, it’s the middle of the night,” I replied. It was now clear that she was also getting the cold, and was all stuffy. So she joined us, Henry woke up, and the much of the rest of the evening was a volley of Kleenex requests, coughs, “can we watch TV” queries, water requests, etc.
I think we all fell asleep finally around 6am, which was great because we had to get up at 7 to get Amelia ready for school. Though once we were up, it was pretty clear Amelia wasn’t feeling well, so she took a sick day and spent most of the day in bed.
Henry, other than continuing his Kleenex dabbing, seemed to feeling lots better and was right back at it. Erin got Amelia comfy and kindly sent me back up to bed to get some rest. I laid down for a couple hours before starting work, but in one of those moments about human sleep physiology I cannot understand, I could not for the life of me fall asleep, in spite of being super, super tired. I do not get it. You try to give the body what it wants, and sometimes it just says, “NOPE.” Annoying, sure, but it did at least felt good to rest for a little while.
Once I got going and had some coffee, I could at least get to a nominal level of function. I was definitely off kilter all day, but muddled through. Henry did eventually lose some momentum, too, and I caught him relaxing on the sofa, watching a movie with some popcorn.
Amelia was feeling better by day’s end, too. And it was still super cold out, so we continued our comfort food streak and made shepherd’s pie for dinner. I did a mix of ground turkey and ground lamb, and was super happy with how it came out.
Now that does a body good. With a full belly and the day behind me, I was pretty much off to bed by the crack of nine. Erin and I are hoping the kids feel better, and are mainlining vitamin C hoping to stave off this cold.
