Runny nose. Sore throat. Incessant coughing. And that’s not your kid, it’s you. You’ve got the mother of all colds and what’s worse, you caught it from the daddy. So you’re both down for the count and your little one could care less.

That’s life in our house right now. Hubby brought back some sort of avian flu from his conference and we both look like dead man walking. Naturally Logan doesn’t understand all that we mean when we say “Mommy and Daddy are sick.”

He doesn’t get why I so desperately need him to go to bed early. (So I can sleep.) Why we’re having tacos again. (No energy to cook.) Why it seems I’m cuddling the box of Kleenexes more than him.

Once you’re sick it’s hard to get better quickly with a young one. I simply try to avoid it in the first place.

Sometimes when Hubby’s circling the drain, I volunteer to sleep in another room so I don’t catch his germs and we step up the hand-washing. This time, I suppose I was too busy to notice he was going down like the Titanic until I myself started sneezing. A daddy friend of mine drinks those Vitamin C fizzy tablets to ward off germs. I don’t know if it would work for everyone, but it seems to work great for him.

Complicating the matters is work. Hubby’s sick days are taken from his already sparse vacation days. Thankfully my job is more flexible than that, so when Logan’s sick I always take the hit. I asked Hubby what do women in his position do if they have sick kids. He told me that there aren’t any women in his position with children. But that’s fodder for a different post.

I won’t even get into the germ-factories that are commonly known as daycares. From November to March we’re all in some stage of ailment.

If you have family around who can help pick up the slack while you recover, don’t be proud, ask for help. If you’re like us and your nearest relatives are 600 miles away, try to take turns on being the primary parent and do what you can to win the race toward good health.

Dinner may come in a box several times this week and there’s going to be a lot more Mickey Mouse on the TV. But that’s OK, colds don’t really last forever. They can just feel like it.