Grateful for: A package of delicious cookies that arrived from Colleen. After my cookie-baking frenzy last week I'm sick of my own cookies, but hers are most welcome!

Reading: The Bird's Christmas Carol by Kate Douglas Wiggin as an ebook on my Palm. I remembered loving this novella when I was a kid. As an adult, however, I found it unbearably saccharine and rife with offensive Victorian assumptions about social classes.

All But Me

Matthew woke up sick this morning. He has the same symptoms the other boys have--coughing and fever--which I realized meant that this mysterious illness isn't strep throat. Matthew is still taking a maintenance dose of amoxicillin twice daily to prevent ear infections, so he would be unlikely to contract a strep infection.

Tab and I brought all three boys to the pediatrician's office for the 9:15 appointment. The pediatrician we saw today was the one who called me over the weekend and the only doctor at this practice we had not yet met. He's the oldest doctor there. I had seen him in the hallway on previous visits, and I had thought he looked a little fearsome; however, he turned out to have a wonderful rapport with kids. He had all three of the boys giggling, even Matthew, which is quite a feat as Matthew rarely warms up to strangers.

And the diagnosis is...a virus. Which means that there is little we can do beyond treating the symptoms and waiting it out. Daniel, however, has a case of bronchitis, for which the pediatrician prescribed amoxicillin. He also gave Daniel a prescription for albuterol, a bronchodilator. We told the doctor that the over-the-counter cough remedies we've been using for the twins don't seem to be helping. He wrote another script for a cough medicine for them.

"I'll write it out for Matthew, but Stephen should take it, too," he said, picking up his prescription pad.

"M-A-T-T-H-E-W-S-T-E-P-H-E-N," supplied Stephen, helpfully. The twins have recently learned how to spell their names.

"Thanks," said the doctor.

So now we have a counterful of medicines: Daniel's albuterol and chewable amoxicillin, the new cough medicine for Stephen and Matthew, children's Tylenol liquid and children's Advil liquid for all the boys, and OTC cough medicine for Tab. I was getting so confused trying to remember who was due for which dose that I've taken to jotting down reminders on the dry-erase board on our refrigerator.

Tab was coughing a lot last night, and while we were waiting in the doctor's office this morning, he began to feel light-headed. Now he's running a fever and feeling generally terrible. He spent the afternoon in bed. All three boys have had temperatures as high as 103 to 104 deg. today. They spent most of the day lying on the couch and love seat, covered with afghans and watching some videos we rented. The one consolation is that they are too tired and ill to fight with each other.

So far, I remain the only healthy one in the house. Here's hoping I'll avoid this disease altogether.

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