Intuititvely obvious life lessons...

1) Sleep makes you feel less tired

Turns out that when you go to bed at 10pm and don't get woken up by a teething, sobbing mammal with a fever in the middle of the night, it makes a BIG difference how you feel in the morning.

For the last several nights, I went to bed around midnight (usually a little later), and WAS woken up somewhere between the hours of 1 and 4am. Consequently, I spent the better part of the last 3 days trying not to spontaneously start whimpering like The Princess Bride's Wesley after enduring the rack.

2) The main job of Children is to collect and spread germs

I know there are a a lot of things that people think Children should be and do-
- Be seen and not heard
- Spread joy
- Pass on your genes
- Scrub this floor until it shines like the top of the Chrystler building
- (and for the RCC) Be protected from the evils of homosexuality... (protected by ??priests??... sidebar... moving on...)

But from an evolutionary standpoint, this is their job for the first few years... to build up an immune system that is capable of fighting off all sorts of bacteria and viruses so that illness won't eliminate them like those visitors from War of the Worlds (Jeeze, I'm really on a movie reference kick this AM).

Between my sister's kids and our kids, one of the 4 has thrown up at least once in the last 5 or 6 weeks. Usually, they seem perfectly happy, then they get green for 48 seconds, look at you and say, "I have to go potty." Then they shoot the contents of their stomach at you in the living room, or where ever is inconvenient. Then after their vague embarrassment passes and the clean up is complete, they resume playing as if nothing happened at all.

Anyway, these kids are not ALWAYS sick so much as sporadically sick, unpredictably healthy, and major CARRIERS of infectious disease. Attempting to quarantine them when they are "sick" is impossible as the cousins would never see each other again. Katy and I have stopped even being phased by runny noses and coughs, but we are still in the mindset of trying to avoid the ever-elusive "stomach bug". The problem is, we do not know when the next puke will come... or from who. And even as seasoned health care professionals, we do not understand the meaning of low grade fevers that come and go for a week or more without any other symptoms.

This is no big deal if I am well-rested. But if I'm particularly exhausted, I start to get paranoid that my tiny children are trying to kill me.

3) Your tiny children are NOT trying to kill you