Beth wanted us to capture “Our Real Life” as the You Capture challenge this week. If you’ve been following our saga, our real life has involved a lot of coughing, a lot of snot, a lot of medicine and a lot of sleep. Interrupted sleep but sleep all the same. We’re sick. Still sick. Newly sick. At various points in our sicknesses.

In fact, I’m on Day 12. That’s right, I got a respiratory infection on top of the flu. When I do something, I go all out! LittleBrother got sick late last week, the flu as well, and got a double ear infection on top of it. Apparently we’re just overachievers. BigBrother, on the other hand, is fine and dandy, moving at speeds I couldn’t keep up with even if I was well. The good news is that we’ve had lots of quiet moments, cuddles like we had yesterday.

And so, really, this has been “our real life” since Thursday of last week.

I’d share a picture of BigBrother but, as I said, he’s well and moving at lightning speeds. I simply can’t keep up. (As a side note, I am finally on antibiotics for my respiratory infection. I hope to feel better before BigBrother’s birthday next Tuesday.)

Hopefully someone else who participated in this week’s You Capture challenge has some pictures that really show their lives. But, really, that’s all we’ve done. Most of the week we didn’t get out of our pajamas. Mmm, pajamas. Next week’s challenge is Sunrise/Sunset which makes me think of the song which makes me weepy as my sons will both be turning another year older in the next week and a half. These sniffles? Uh, they’re just because I’m sick. I swear…

(As a side note, my $100 Visa gift card giveaway is ending today! It’s sponsored by Ragu. Go give it a look!)

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If you’re the spouse of a firefighter, I should give you this warning: Don’t Get Sick. Ever. Of course, most parents dread the process of getting sick themselves whether they work outside the home, inside the home or have a spouse that leaves for 24 to 48 hours at a time. As I’m currently in the middle of a 36 hour shift on my own, I’m hoping that I can start breathing properly some time today.

The truth is that spouses of firefighters aren’t magically immune from germs. We get sick just like any other parent. While every parenting unit has unique challenges when it comes to issues like these, fire families are often dealing with a schedule that is both beneficial and frustrating. Beneficial in the fact that for most professional firefighters, the sick spouse gets a two day reprieve while the firefighter is home. Frustrating in the fact that the spouse often has 24 hours at home, alone, sick with sick kids. 24 hours can seem like an eternity when you’re feverish and overtired with feverish and overtired children.

Here are some tips for parents who are sick when their spouse goes off to the fire department for a 24 hour (or longer) shift:

• Drink your fluids! Not just coffee. Keep a water bottle with you at all times.
• Don’t forget to eat. Even if you don’t have an appetite. Eat light but you need energy!
• Make sure you have all medicine before your spouse leaves for work. It’s really discouraging to realize that you don’t have enough cold/cough/fever medicine part way through the day.
• Rest! Nap when the kids nap. If the kids don’t nap, spread sleeping bags on the floor and watch a movie. By watch a movie, I do mean that you should be dozing.
• Keep in contact with your spouse. Don’t be brave just because your spouse is working. If you need to go to the hospital, be honest.
• Leave the house clean up for when you’re feeling better. A clean house makes everyone feel better, it’s true, but you need to be resting. Get back in bed. The dishes will get done.
• Accept help! If your mother, father-in-law, best friend or neighbor want to brave the germs in your house to bring you a meal or watch the kids for an hour, allow them to do so. Time “off” for a bit allows you to rest. I cannot stress how important resting is while you’re sick!

Furthermore, when your spouse comes home in the morning (or whenever the end of their shift occurs), give them a hug, an update on the kids’ health and head to the shower for a very steamy wash off and then get thee to bed! Your spouse did just work 24 hours. (Or more!) But you’re sick. Your spouse will understand. Get steamed up and get some more rest. Everyone who has tried to nap in a house with two kids who were awake knows that it doesn’t result in a very restful rest. Go rest now, while you can.

We’re surviving. I still have a lead balloon in my lungs. BigBrother, on one hand, is almost completely well as he’s just dealing with a runny nose and some Grumpies right now. LittleBrother, on the other hand, is now spiking a fever and dealing with those early days of this sickness. Thankfully, I’m well enough, minus the inability to breathe deeply, to care for him in a mostly coherent way while FireDad is working a 36 hour shift. I think I’ll still go back to bed when he gets home tomorrow but I really hope it’s the last day that I have to do such a thing. I’m tired of being sick while my kids are sick! It’s exhausting.

Now if we can only keep FireDad from catching our germs. Maybe he should have stayed at work all week…

I spent the weekend in bed or on the couch. This time spent was neither in a relaxed, lounging type manner nor in the manner someone in their younger twenties might be spending a weekend. No, very little relaxation or sexy time was to be had this past weekend. I was sick. Very sick. BigBrother brought home some form of a virus, one we can speculate to be of some flu-type variety, and, man, did it knock me out.

Did I mention that FireDad was working his normal 24 hour shift on Saturday?

Have you ever tried to parent from the couch or the bed? I have before, having been placed on Level III bedrest while pregnant with LittleBrother. BigBrother was not-quite-two during those ten long weeks of my life. To be honest, I wasn’t all that great at bedrest. It was hard to be good at it when the not-quite-two year old needed to do things like, oh, eat on days that FireDad was off doing his duty. Still, I did my best. My best then, while hugely pregnant with a malfunctioning kidney, was a million and one times better than what I had to offer two children, not-quite-two and not-quite-four, this past weekend. We seem to have survived. I think.

I am thankful that they are quite adept at amusing themselves and one another. It would have been a smidgen more awesome if BigBrother had napped considering that he was sick as well (read: whiny) but you take the good with the bad. Or, really, the bad with the bad. He did not attend preschool today though I did manage to drink enough cold medicine to make it through my first day of work. I did, however, forget to take my own camera to my first day of work… as a photographer. Medicine head fail. (That said, I will be getting a swanky Nikon for the newspaper. Hooray!)

I must admit that this illness did me one fabulous thing. How can an illness give you anything fabulous? Since I was so sick and so preoccupied with being sick, I didn’t have time to be nervous about today’s first trip into work. Or leaving my kids (with their father, mind you). Or any of that normal anxiety that creeps into my psyche on the eve of any big life change. In fact, I wasn’t all that nervous this morning. You know, when I was busy leaving my camera behind. Maybe I could have stood to be a slight bit more nervous, no?

We’re all on the mend. I can’t tell if LittleBrother is getting our cough or not. BigBrother’s temperature did spike to 104.3 on Friday night but came down immediately after a dose of ibuprofen and never went back over 101 after that initial spike. We were afraid, as we usually are when it comes to his health, that he would lose the ability to breathe properly. So far, knock on wood, he has not. His cough is mostly dry and scratchy now, like mine. I had some pretty nasty junk going on in my chest for most of the weekend. As the flu, whatever the variety, is a manageable illness as long you are a healthy individual who pays attention to your symptoms or your kids’ symptoms, we didn’t take a trip to the doctor’s office. I won’t be able to tell you if this was “the” flu that everyone is freaking out about unless we end up with the letters-and-numbers virus at a later date in time. (Like any flu virus, you can only get it once (per strain, per year). That means we can still get that “scary” flu if we haven’t yet or another strain such as the normal seasonal flu.) Whatever the case, we are feeling much better. Glad to be on the mend and looking forward to a busy November.

But, please, could you wash your hands? And teach your children not to cough on my children? As much as I can handle the flu, my poor little nose is tired of tissues, however soft and lotion-laden they claim to be.