Three

3. That is the number of times that the hubs has been out of town for the majority of the week for work since the beginning of 2013.

3. That is the number of times that T has had some yuckiness or another while the hubs has been out of town.
It's not shaping up to be a great track record.

The first was just a cold. A cough-through the night, mom resorts to turning off the sound on the monitor so she can get a little bit of rest cold. But just a cold.

The second was a nice little mom-fail.  Last week, I noticed that T was pretty much covered in little bumps all over his hands, feet, knees, and seat.  But as I’ve mentioned before, he is really sensitive to bug bites – and since he now comes home almost daily with sand pouring out of every inch of himself due to his new love of the sandbox at school, I figured that the unseasonably warm weather combined with my child’s sensitivity and sand obsession resulted in some sort of weird insect getting to him. In my defense, I pointed it out to his teachers, and they didn’t think anything differently than I did – they actually had the whole yard sprayed for crazy bugs because of him then (which I really appreciated for the pro-activeness, actually). And then, the bug bites started to appear to be blisters. Tons of little blisters. But it was an insanely busy week at work with must-attend meetings up the wazoo, I was single parenting, and he wasn’t acting bothered in the slightest by the blistery bumps, so I decided if they weren’t gone by the end of the week, I’d take him to the doctor over the weekend. Well, hubs got back into town and thought they looked a lot worse than I did, so we took him to the doctor on Friday. Apparently, the bug bites were coxsackie virus, or even better sounding, hand foot and mouth disease. Lovely. In my defense, the doctor did say that the bumps did look like ant bites – and without the fever and irritability that usually goes along with the virus, it’s possible he wasn’t even contagious. Regardless, I admit it. Failure.

The third is this week. T seems to have gotten his bazillionth cold of the month and it turned nasty last night. School tells me that all of the kids basically have colds right now and two got sent home sick yesterday, with one being tested as we speak for the flu. Wonderful. Last night, T was up coughing again from about 12:30 on. I was up listening to him from about 12:30 on. Even with the second dosage of Benedryl I gave him around 1am – he didn’t sound so hot. This morning, he had a slight temperature – 99 – but I **think** 99 degree temps are allowed at school*. So, because this is insanity week #2 before my work’s big convention and because I had a big meeting scheduled with my boss today, in he went. And I spent the day watching my phone waiting for the call from school to come pick him up -- which thankfully it didn't. Tonight however, he had a 101.4 fever - so work and daycare isn't looking so hot for tomorrow.

Sigh. We need a break.

*My old daycare did, anyway. I believe the send-home threshold is generally 100.3? Though my co-worker informed me today her daycare sends kiddos home when their temperature reaches 99.5. Seriously? Some people have a base temperature of 99 for goodness sake. I digress.