Snuffles

Teyla wouldn’t go to sleep last night.

She wasn’t cranky. Just the opposite. She was a shrieking, laughing, smiling, crawling bundle of enthusiasm.

I didn’t understand the sudden spurt of energy. We’d had a busy day. She’d taken a decent afternoon nap, but that had been hours ago.

Yet there she was. At 9:00 PM, 10:00 PM, even 11:00 PM – babbling, waving her hands, smiling, reaching. Happy.

What do you do with a baby so excited about life?

She finally fell asleep around 11:15. I hightailed it to bed, to join my already snoozing husband.

At 1:30, I heard her cry.

“Seriously?” I thought, as I stumbled down the hallway, navigating to the nursery by sound and not by sight.

I was greeted with the sort of sound Mr. Snuffleupagus makes.

Oh. That explains it then.

I don’t know why, but when my kids get sick, they don’t get tired – they get hyper. You can see the exhaustion in their red-rimmed eyes, but it as if their bodies refuse to give the germs any satisfaction.

“Oh, you’d like to have me down for the count, wouldn’t you? I don’t think so.”

We were up almost every hour after that. I’d nurse her back to sleep, which enabled her to negotiate a clear breathing path again. Sixty to ninety minutes later, we were back in the glider.

Morning came much too soon.

So here’s what I want to know. Now that we aren’t supposed to give our infants cold medicine (although I think I still have a bottle back in the medicine cabinet from before the stuff was banned; I wonder what it would go for on the black market?), what can a tired parent do to relieve their babies sniffles?

She isn’t congested. She doesn’t have a fever. She just has a facet for a nose.

Do they make nasal diapers yet? I'm just sayin'.