Well that explains it

I thought about taking Paul to the doctor for his pink eye yesterday, but his 6 month well check was already scheduled for today, so I waited. (Normally I’m a fan of letting pink eye run its course since it’s usually viral, but the particular strain our family has been passing back and forth for a month seems especially vicious when unmedicated and clears up really fast with antibiotics, so I think it’s bacterial.)

The nurse asked me how Paul was doing and I was all breezy “Oh, just a little pink-eye, no big deal! Otherwise, he’s good!” Then the thermometer beeped and she shot me a look and said he had a temperature of over 100.

Oh.

It got even worse when the doctor came in the room. He checked Paul out then asked how long he’d had pink eye. I babbled on about how he got it right after Meg did two weeks ago, so I just gave him ointment we had left over from when he had pink eye two months ago. It went away, then my mom caught it and now Paul has it again.

He said (in a nice way) both the eyes and ears were infected and by only treating the eye I did no good, because the untreated ears would just re-infect the eyes.

Excellent. So do you have mother-of-the-year awards in the office or do they get mailed? I asked. (Or just thought. Whatever.)

What I actually said was Meg has the same pink eye and she IS looking a little flushed/feverish, so could you look at her ears, too? He took a quick peek and determined she also has an ear infection.

So. Meg is not just cranky because she’s overstimulated from Christmas, she has pink eye and an ear infection.

Paul is not just refusing to sleep because he’s going through a growth spurt, teething, a wonder week, a physical developmental leap, and pink eye, he ALSO has a double ear infection. And a cough. And a mystery rash on his chest that’s “probably viral.”

I'm guessing he'd probably say he's having the worst week of his life. Man, six months is rough.