"Gesundheit"

Despite our extensive efforts to keep our home as germ free as possible, we were recently unable to keep away a summer cold.  From all of us.

Allison went down first.  The pediatrician's instructions were for her to have no direct contact with Ayden.  So, she stayed quarantined in our bedroom, only venturing when he was asleep.  I had to take a Thursday and Friday off work so I could do my best Mr. Mom impression.  For three and a half days, I was the 24 hour caregiver.  I changed every diaper, did every feed, wiped every post-sneeze nose (Ayden developed cold symptoms during this time, too), cleaned up every spit up/throw up/vomit, etc.  By day four, I was very glad Allison was starting to feel better.  I have a whole new appreciation for single parents.  I don't know how they do it all, all the time.

While Allison was confined to her cold prison, I slept on the couch in the hopes of avoiding getting sick.  No such luck.  Given that I was around him all the time for almost four days, Ayden probably gave it to me, not Allison.  I managed to get the mildest version.  I had a scratchy throat and some sneezing, but never really felt bad.  Ayden and Allison had a harder time of it.

In the end, Ayden coped with his first cold quite admirably.  There were times when it was obvious he did not feel good.  Things seemed to be the worst after he had just woken up (I'm guessing all the gunk that had accumulated in his sinuses while he was sleeping was draining into his throat after he awoke).  Overall, though, he went about his days in much the same way as he normally does, albeit with a bunch of additional sneezing (his nose never ran, possibly because he was ejecting huge globs of snot via the sneezes).  For anyone with young children, I highly recommend buying a product called "Boogie Wipes" for when they get sick.  I probably wiped Ayden's 40+ times.  It never got raw.

While we would never want him to be sick, it was encouraging to see that his oxygen levels could stay normal (for him), despite the cold.  We checked him several times during the week or so that he was under the weather in some form, each time wondering if the numbers we would see would dictate a trip to the hospital.  They didn't.  And that's the most important thing.