Proper care and feeing of your polar bear/koala/seal/sea lion/child

Our girls have croup. At least I think they have croup because if I didn't know there were children tucked in bed behind their door I might think their room was full of sea lions. They both have that notorious croup cough that sounds like a seal's bark: "Ar, ar, ar!"*

Yesterday we suggested that Andrew take the girls home after sacrament meeting but Rachel really wanted to go to Sunbeams so we scrapped that plan and instead dug up some cough drops for her. We rifled through the medicine cabinet and found some lemon-eucalyptus cough drops. We told her that it was medicine but that it was so good it was going to taste like candy. We may have played it up too much because the minute she popped a drop in her mouth she screwed up her face and announced, "This does not taste like candy."

"Oh, but it's good! It's like a lemon drop!"

"No, it's not. I want to spit it out."

"Oh, but it's got eucalyptus in it! Do you know what animal eats eucalyptus?"

"No...what?"

"A koala! You like koalas—they're so cute and fluffy—and you're eating what they eat. Isn't that cool?"

"No. I want to spit it out. It's a-gusting!"

"It's not disgusting! Koalas love this stuff!"

"It's a-gusting. I want to spit it out."

In the end we gave her permission to spit it out and Andrew rifled through his backpack and found some cherry cough drops from ages ago. She liked those so we found a little purse for her to carry at church and loaded it up with cherry cough drops. She made it through the day but she ate all but two of the cough drops.

Since it was Sunday we didn't buy her more and instead made her ration the other two out until bedtime. Andrew said he'd pick some up on his way home from school on Monday. But he forgot.

Luckily we went to BYU for FHE (look at me, acronym-dropping; it's like I'm in my element) so figured we stop to get some cough drops while we were out. Unfortunately, the bookstore was closed so we couldn't get any before FHE but then I seemed to remember that the vending machines on campus carried them so we checked the ones in the Wilk but didn't find any. So apparently they either don't carry them anymore or I am just remembering wrong.

Rachel suffered through FHE ran around making friends with and chasing all the "big kids" and throwing beach balls and playing with leis. Miriam chose to cling to either me or Grandma the whole time; though she did get brave enough to make a few cross-room passes in order to get from me to Grandma. We had a "summer celebration" with Reid and Karen's ward. It was fun.

After the spiritual thought we bundled the girls up and took them back into the cold, wet, snowy, winter wonderland (if only we had really been at the beach). We stopped by the Creamery on 9th and Andrew left me in the car with the girls while he ran inside to get some cough drops for Rachel. He came back with two bags of cherry-flavoured cough drops.

"What kind did he get?" Rachel asked.

"Cherry," I told her, "They're pinkish-reddish."

"Good! That's the kind that I like! Can I have one now?"

I unwrapped one and handed it to her. She popped it in her mouth and gave it a few good sucks.

"Noooo!" she wailed, "This is the kind that polar bears like!"

"What?" I asked.

"I don't like the kind that polar bears like!" she cried.

I looked at the package: Mentho-lyptus.

"Oh," I said when in dawned on me, "You mean koala bears."

"Yeah—because it's spicy."

For a few minutes we tried to convince her that it was just minty, like a candy cane, but she wasn't going to be convinced. It was spicy and "agusting" and we weren't going to convince her otherwise. We made her keep it in her mouth until we got home. As soon as she walked through the door she headed to the garbage can where she spat it out and then had a coughing fit that caused her to throw up all over the kitchen floor. Lovely. I just mopped this morning.

Also, my toenail fell off and Miriam has diarrhea. So we're basically having a good day.

We got the girls into bed and the throw-up laundry into the washing machine (that'd be my fifth load today) and then left Andrew's parents in charge while we ran to Macey's to find some cough drops without menthol in them (I'm pretty sure menthol is the spicy-culprit since it's a mint derivative; eucalyptus sounds like it should be bland, don't you think?). We found some pectin drops and...some winter mittens just about Rachel's size.

You know: the kind of mittens that are soft and warm on the inside and waterproof on the outside. We haven't been able to find them anywhere, at least not in any clothing stores. But the pharmacy aisle at the grocery store? Sure, why not there? They were a little pricey (as in more-than-$5) but she's been wearing thin (fleece) mittens all winter long so we figured it was worth it. She should be able to wear them for a few years to come and it will prolong her play time outside time since she won't have to come in with prematurely-numbed fingers. Win, win, win.

My little seal pups are still barking in their sleep (despite the humidifier, medicine, hugs and kisses). Hopefully they'll get over this soon. It feels like we're catching everything that's coming around this season.

*While it's the flipper-clapping, ball-on-nose-balancing sea lions that are known for their "ar, ar, ar" it is not incorrect to call it a seal's bark since sea lions are, truthfully, seals. Sea lions are in the Otarildae family, or the family of eared seals. Thus, all sea lions are seals but not all seals are sea lions.