I've had plenty of experience with sick. Why wife is a teacher, and during her first year she brought home every bug you could imagine. When I lived in the dorms in college, I used to catch things like the flu and strep throat on a regular schedule. This year has been crazy though - it's like my home has become an incubator for some persistent, stuffy nose, chest congestion, cough, and be miserable version of the cold.

I just came off my second bout with this creature. Apparently it's not serious, because it never really causes a fever, but I hate it. The wife's starting her second go-'round and the kid just came off her second. I think our dog even had the cold once.

I'm sure many of my more astute readers are thinking, "clean the house, wash all the sheets, clean the surfaces, get those germs out."

Yeah, we did that. I think we only made it mad.

To make things more fun, the FDA and drug companies have decided that children's cold medicines are dangerous, and they really didn't work that well anyway. Sick toddlers are a blast. there's few things as fun a trying to wipe your screaming daughter's nose, knowing there's not much to do but turn on the vaporizer and wait it out.

I guess the little girl has learned something, though. If you pick up a tissue and start walking toward her, she'll cover her face, scream "no boogies," and run toward the other end of the house. She knows the word "medies" which is supposed to be the cute way to say "medicine." She can even say "sick," but obviously doesn't know what it means since she'll try to jump on my stomach after saying "daddy sick."

I've learned a bit myself. I've tried a whole new range of cold and cough medicines - my favorites are descriptions including, nighttime, severe and multi-symptom. I've tried a few different ways to over-load myself on vitamin C. My best results have come, funny enough, from eating oranges - who would've thought.

The only thing more fun than going through all this sickness, is knowing that there's probably another bout coming. The family is venturing out into the public again, just begging more sickness to follow us back to the house.