009: Traveling With Kids

We just got better from being sick...the kinda sick that is not bad enough to stay in bed, but ...it’s miserable.

**NOTE: We are NOT giving medical advice, only sharing anecdotes and our experiences. Nothing in this episode should be considered advice. Please consult a physician with any medical concerns.**

When one person gets sick...everybody gets sick. The whole ordeal can last anywhere from a week to a month!

Wintertime, especially the holidays is when people start dropping like flies.

Liam and Bekah were both sick up through Christmas Eve this year. We were traveling and staying with family, so we quarantined ourselves.

Liam was especially fascinated by “barfing”. He would ask for juice so he could barf more. NO!!! Yuk. He would end up barfing all over the floor and Ryan would end up walking through it.

Ryan tried to keep his distance from the sick room only going in when needed. Poor Bekah!

The quarantine worked! Nobody else got the flu!

The thing about toddlers is—you never know if they are barfing from excitement, or if they have a terrible stomach flu.

Playground equipment is an especially precarious scenario ...there was a season where Ryan debated letting Liam play on playgrounds because he did not want to have the consequence of the whole family being sick for three weeks. In the end though, he would let Liam play.

No matter what you do, people are going to get sick.

THERMOMETER DRAMA [8:45]

You would think thermometers would be straightforward.

Not at all.

There are way too many thermometers to choose from. Our doctor recommended the kind you run across the forehead. Ryan’s friend recently let him know we had been using the stupid thermometer the wrong way.

We discuss our troubles with wildly various results using thermometers which adds to the chaos of parenting.

We now have three different kinds of thermometers. Including an infrared sensor thermometer that would line up red lights on the forehead, but that would also give us unreliable readings.

One time, our youngest was getting high readings and lower readings, so we decided to go get a rectal thermometer. A horrifying proposal. But we needed to know if we had to take him to the doctor...Ryan bought the thermometer and Rebekah figured out how to use it...all that to say, his temperature was normal.

The other thing that is frustrating about thermometers is traveling...when you forget to bring them. We spend more money replacing thermometers that we already own.

For Rebekah, the thing about getting sick as the mother, is that it’s not fair because she is taking care of everyone and no-one is there to take care of her....Yup. she threw Ryan under the bus.

When parents get sick: life is already impossible with life and kids. But being sick adds that extra layer. Everything begins to fall apart, because nothing is getting done. Thats just how it is. It’s part of familydom.

What do you do if your kid is starting to feel sick, do you cancel everything? Or what if you find out other families are not feeling well, do you stay away? For us, if it’s obvious stay away. But if it’s mild, then each scenario is different. At the end of the day, it’s about communicating with and informing other parents so people can make their own discussions. We appreciate it when people tell us, even after the fact, that we’ve been exposed to something because their kids got sick after hanging out with us. We’ve all got kids. Life happens. The more kids you have, the more you realize that you cannot control everything.

We talk about a story where we took Liam to a playground at a zoo and came back with Hand Foot and Mouth Disease...But the memory was really incredible and he had so much fun playing with the other kids. Ryan says it was worth it, Rebekah is not so sure. We dig into how Ryan gets to go to work the next day, but Rebekah has to take care of the sick kiddos at home. It’s hard to see your kid suffering while sick.

We talk about the strange advice you get from doctors. When Liam had croup, we thought he had something stuck in his thought because he was wheezing. The doc advised us to stick his face in front of the open freezer door...which we did...but it was weird.

[27:00] PARENTAL INSTINTS

Parental instincts. We talk about having the first kid and how parents are overprotective...at least Ryan was. He was told it would happen, he tried to prepare for it, but instinctually he would respond to things at an extreme level. He believes it’s about creating new brain pathways and learning where to put new emotions and responses. The second kid is much easier because you have built those new pathways.

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