When we woke up on Monday and realized the extent of Stella’s cold, I volunteered to do my duty as a dedicated mother and stay home with her. I immediately sensed that Steve was kicking himself that he hadn’t volunteered first. Not to be outdone, he quickly announced that he would arrange to have a sub cover him for Tuesday. The irony to this story is that after each of us spent a full day at home with her, and had to make the decision if we needed to keep her at home any longer, we began heartily convincing each other that “she really seems to have turned the corner!” and “look, her nose is barely even running anymore!” and “really, we hardly had to get up with her at all last night!” The obvious subtext being: “PLEEEEEEASE let me go back to work!”

When you realize that you can take a legitimate sick day off work even though you are not actually sick, AND you aren’t faking sick, or taking liberties with a “mental health day,” you get this deep down little feeling like “Woo Hoo! This is so cool!” You get so wrapped up in the idea of getting a day off from work that you forget that your cumulative lack of sleep is starting to make you hallucinate, and that it is pouring rain outside, AND that a sick two-year-old is pretty much the equivalent of an angry swarm of bees.

She continued to get more and more sleep deprived, but adamantly refused to nap anywhere but on the couch – and absolutely no longer than at 15 minute intervals. Because of her fever, she flat-out refused any food offered to her – no matter that we had reached the point where we were offering her sugary sugar puffs with syrup topping and a side of french fries – just eat SOMETHING! Her nose wouldn’t stop running, and she became adamant that she use her sleeve instead of a Kleenex. By the time Steve got home on Monday afternoon both Stella and I were still in our pajamas.

When I got home from work on Tuesday, Stella was still wearing the same pajamas. Aside from the fact that she had been wearing the exact same clothing for almost 48 continuous hours, Steve also informed me that they had gone out in public together. “In that?!” I asked. “Yeah, and her pair of black rubber irrigation boots. Oh, and her jean jacket.” Nice.

At that point there was no question in my mind: Stella was going back to day care, we were going back to work, and we’d all just pretend like none of this ever happened.

Today we are having a sick day – Stella and I. Maybe it was the persistent smokers hack she has developed, or the fact that her nose is running like a rocky mountain stream of snot, or the fact that she hasn’t eaten more than three and a half bites of food in the last 36 hours, but my finely tuned maternal instincts honed right in on her needs and here we are.

When she is sick it is a strange juxtaposition of feelings because I don’t ever, Ever, EVER want her to have to suffer like this but oddly, the change in her demeanor – to sweet and helpless – causes me to briefly consider keeping her in this incapacitated state forever. Her ability to be this cuddly and needy is a brief glimpse into how the other people live. This morning she clung to me like a baby koala and it couldn’t have been anymore endearing.

Being that she currently refuses to eat more than 1 bite of anything offered to her, I thought I could sway her into consuming a larger quantity if we made it a project-based event. A quick scan of the kitchen, and I decided we had all the ingredients to make banana-nut muffins. She seemed on board with it, so we hauled her box of Kleenex into the kitchen and managed to make one of the largest messes on record. She repeatedly coughed and sneezed directly into the batter, insisted that she (with the accuracy and precision of, well, a two year old) get to stir the ingredients, and demanded that part of the recipe required that we fill two of the paper muffin cups with chopped pecans. From an outsider’s perspective, it pretty much looked like we had stood across the room and thrown the ingredients at the bowl. We somehow managed to get the batter into the cups and the whole mess went into the oven for 20 minutes – basically, just long enough to lose the momentum of what the whole event was supposed to be about: getting her to eat. By the time the muffins were out of the oven and ready to consume, she feigned interest long enough for me to get her to eat roughly a bite and a half.

Up next, getting her to sleep somewhere besides on my person.