Adventures Of Fatherhood

Adventures Of Fatherhood
new fatherhood headshot

The typical hectic pace of family life came to a grinding halt last week when illness put a stranglehold on the house.

For the first time in his school career, Beckett missed school for being sick, and it was a doozy of an illness. A virus knocked him off his feet for two straight days and then it took another three for him to get his energy back up to its usual high level. Even when he was well enough to go to school on Monday, it was clear he still was not at 100%.

This was the sickest he has ever been, and there was no mistaking he was under the weather when he had to come home from school early last week. He is typically full of energy (usually a bit too much) and has a certain zest for life, but not on this day as he was too beat to even keep his head up.

The day after coming home from school he was vomiting and sleeping and slept for 16 hours straight. He woke up the next morning even more lethargic and clearly battling a major bug.

While we do our best to quarantine the sick in our house, it’s almost impossible for germs not to be shared in some fashion. We thought we were doing a pretty good job of it until Friday afternoon when I picked Carson up from school.

He’s usually exhausted at pickup time but on this day he fell asleep in my arms on the way to the car. He had the same defeated look Beckett had a couple days prior. When I asked him how he was feeling, he gave me a thumb down while shaking his head, “no.” That’s when I got a glimpse of the weekend that was to lie ahead for us.

The good news for Carson was his bout was short lived and within 24 hours he was back to himself and his energy level was restored. That only seemed to make Beckett more aggravated over his debilitated condition.

Soon enough, as he started feeling a little better each day, it became quite the chore trying to keep him settled. As he progressed, he wanted to get back into his usual swing of things — soccer, karate, school, football, trampoline, swimming and all the other things 7-year-olds enjoy on a daily basis.

Sure enough he wore me down on Saturday afternoon and I took him outside for a little bit. Although he didn’t want to admit it, I could see it in his eyes that he was still bad off and needed to get back off his feet immediately.

What the challenging weekend proved to me without a doubt is I’m terrible at coping with sick kids. I have a tough time masking my frustration over the whole thing and my anxiety is evident. So much so that Beckett posed an interesting question to me at one point after I answered one of his frequent calls for something to drink. “Are you as mad with God as I am about making me sick?,” he asked.

After explaining that I was not and that he shouldn’t be either and why, I decided I needed to put a better face forward for him.

However, come Sunday night I was back to being a little testy, as my wife can surely confirm.

I was done with constantly checking temperatures with thermometers, measuring out medicine, trying to constantly keep the kids apart and keeping a trash can nearby since every cough could result in more vomiting

Yeah I was over it and fortunately for everyone’s sake the kids were able to go to school on Monday, but as luck would have it as soon as I got to the office I started to feel terribly sick myself.

The last place I was going was home though as those walls were closing in on me all weekend.

It looks like a new chapter at home is about to begin with our kids.

No food appears to be safe anywhere at all these days. The boys always seem to be hungry and would seemingly snack all day if they had their way.

Of the two boys, Carson is the bigger eater of the two. He’s the one who can be found often digging through the freezer and fridge as well as the cupboards. He’s not a picky eater either. He will try just about anything and oftentimes his appetite is larger than reality.

I watched him recently drag a chair into the kitchen and grab a jug of peanut butter. He then took the same chair and reached atop the fridge to grab a banana, his favorite food since he was a baby. He peeled the banana and just started dipping the entire thing in the peanut butter. He was quite proud of himself until apparently something struck him. He then raced back to the kitchen. He came out with chocolate syrup and wanted to squeeze some into the peanut butter.

As much as I enjoyed watching him and applauded his creativity (banana, peanut butter and chocolate is a great combination, after all), I had to put a stop to that. We compromised on the peanut butter and banana, but back the chocolate syrup had to go.