Sick House

I'm babysitting in the sick house right now; meaning - both husband and child are fighting what is likely RSV (Respiratory Syncytial Virus). Sounds a lot scarier that it really is - a crappy common cold virus. If Ellie were premature or a lot smaller, we'd have a cause for concern, but she's not, so no big deal. She does sound like a dying horse when she coughs, and has snot coming out of her nose for miles (too gross of imagery?) and has had a little fever for the last couple of days. The good news is that she's over the hump and is now sleeping better (thank you LORD!). The bad news is the pediatrician we visited today officially thinks I'm a paranoid first time mom (second visit to him in which he diagnoses Ellie with basically just childhood crud). It's just, when she pulls on her ears and runs a fever, I get all "EAR INFECTION!" and then rush her in. Turns out that the sinus pressure she's facing makes her ears feel funny (duh), so she wacks at them. Makes perfect sense to me.

Peter's got it too (thanks to the same pediatrician for diagnosing!), and seeing my man fight a cold makes me almost equally as sad as watching my baby fight it. Poor guy. Last night he got all sneezy and chilly and after rummaging through our medicine cabinet and not finding what he was looking for (despite the presence of nyquil), he took a benadryl and hoped it would help. It did not. So, 20 minutes later he rushed off to the grocery store (along with a list from me - coffee ice cream and vinegar (more on that in a second)) and came back with.... more nyquil. Which he took a couple swigs of, and promptly passed out while watching the republican Iowa caucus returns (which was fabulously entertaining and if it was any indicator, promises a super fun election season!). Is it weird that I'm getting all excited about the prospect of having David Gergen back on tv on a nightly basis? :)

When I crawled into bed, he whispered "Michelle Bachmann thinks she won" and then rolled over and passed out again. Super funny, as she most clearly did NOT win. So, I slapped a breathe right strip on his nose in anticipation of sleeping next to someone doped up with both benadryl AND nyquil and checked on his breathing off an on throughout the night, just in case. My two sweet babies. Both slept quite well.

On the vinegar front - and this is really gross, so please don't judge me.... we seem to have some fleas in our house. GROSS ME OUT. I have taken to vaccuuming nightly, have flea-medicated both critters and mopped the bathroom twice. They're still there. I was thinking I'd do some sort of heavy, vinegar dousing of the house, but now I'm reading that fleas aren't killed by vinegar, merely they are turned off by vinegar and go elsewhere (in your house). So, that won't do. When Ellie wakes up, we're off to the petstore to see if they have any ideas. I really do not want to flea bomb the house or do anything remotely toxic, so I'm looking for non-toxic, effective ways to get rid of these nasty buggers. Any thoughts??

Happy New Year everyone!