Ever have one of those moments as a parent that you just know, you really should go ahead and clear your calendar for the next day, because your child is going to be sick?  Well, that happened to me last night and this afternoon.

Last night Baby A started coughing, granted I was watching the Elections and my wife was taking care of the kids, but I could just tell by his coughing, that not only would he be up later that night, but that I would be taking today off to be with him. Sure enough, I went upstairs after midnight, most races had been called or at least there was a good idea of the direction that they were heading in and there laid Baby A, in my spot. He had a fever. A fever = no daycare.

Before I had gone upstairs, I quickly looked at my calendar for today, realized that I could move things around, work a little from home and take care of him, as my wife was on call. But all I could think of was that sometimes a being sick gets in the way. It wasn’t like he intended to be sick and it wasn’t like last month my wife planned to be on call today when he was sick. It is what it is. It is life. It is part of being a parent. And yes, I am fortunate enough to have understanding bosses and more importantly, an even better staff that can handle things while I’m out.

Throughout the day, I talked off and on with my mom, describing Baby A’s symptoms, coughing (he was diagnosed with Croup last year) and a low grade fever. And I was telling her how he was eating and drinking plenty of fluids and playing, but that he was still warm.  And then she started asking questions about his demeanor and symptoms and I said yes to everything she asked only to find out at the end, he is going through the same thing that I did at his age and there wasn’t anything that I could do about it, other than get the fever down and put him in the shower and get some steam into his lungs. And my mom said simply, sometimes in life, “being sick gets in the way.”

Life is hard, we have busy schedules and things that we want to do. But in life, sometimes being sick gets in the way. Kids don’t choose to get sick. They don’t want to feel bad. They don’t want to miss out with what is going on at school or sports, but it happens. And as much as of inconvenience that was to rearrange my day today and now also for tomorrow too, I wouldn’t have it any other way.