Being a parent is never easy. Not only do you have to take care of your children, but you have to be body language experts and mind readers. Yesterday we had one of those days where we wish we had been better at the latter two.

NHL woke up in the morning asked to go to the couch to watch some Noggin before getting breakfast. When it was time to eat he did not want anything and asked to head back to sleep. Not on the couch to watch television – he went to his room on his own.

WHAT?    

Seriously this should have been our first clue. NHL has hardly napped since he turned four and is five now. He woke up just in time to get ready to go to hebrew school. JL was able to get him to eat just a little something. When we picked him up at hebrew school at 12:30 he seemed a little tired, but nothing alarming. We told him that we were going to the grocery store quickly to get a few things.

When he got into the cart I noticed that NHL looked horrible. His coloring was washed out completely. I felt his head and it was cool. He said his tummy hurt and was hungry. We bought a package of pretzle crisps for the two boys (sitting in a car cart together) to share. Once we had the snack he did not want to eat it. As we moved along the store he asked us to hurry up. We assumed it was because he was hungry.

Can you tell where this is going already? I sure wish I had.

When we were on the dairy aisle (our second to last one – only needed frozen after that) things went horribly bad. All of the sudden NHL started to gag. JL saw this and jumped right in and stood there trying to catch what was errupting from Mount St. NHL. Thank goodness NHL turned his head to the right and not the left where JSL was sitting next to him.

I quickly picked JSL up out of the cart and ran to the front of the store to call for a clean up on the dairy aisle. Then I went to the bathroom where they only had toilet paper. I got as much as I could and went back to JL and NHL. At this point NHL was sitting there wimpering and barely able to sit in the cart. I told JL where the bathroom was to take him in case he needed it and to wipe him down quickly.

When the boys came back to us on the now nasty dairy aisle NHL was burning up. I gave them the keys to go to the car and I quickly got a new cart and went to check out. When we arrived home NHL’s temperature was 101.6 and climbing. We managed to get ibuprofen in him and it stayed down. The rest of the afternoon he was napping and barely able to move. At about 4:30 he woke up soaked, his fever had clearly broken. He asked to go to the couch and drank a little apple juice.

This morning he woke up and has his appetite back and we are fever free. Still, thanks to that fever last night, NHL will be spending the day home today. 

Please let there be no more volcanic members of our family!