Why Mommy Should Never Get Sick

I was sick this week and I felt awful.  I had a fever, complete with aches and chills.  My head felt three sizes too small.  I could only breathe out of one nostril at a time.  And my eyes were longing for a calm, dark place in which to rest.  But no, it was not to be.  I am a mom after all...

1. Mom's don't get to tend to themselves.  They don't get to take time off work.  They go right on about the business of mothering, tending to everything else in their world but themselves.
2. It is exceedingly nice when your husband comes home early with groceries for you and take out dinner.  ExCEEDingly nice.  But somehow you don't consider that an invitation to take the night off and you end up doing bedtime routines (which include bending over for baths) anyway, because it's your turn.  
3. It doesn't help to tell the children you don't feel well.  Kids smell weakness a mile away and pounce on it.  Advertising it is like chumming the water.  It just brings more pouncing, faster.  I got jumped on, kicked and smothered as I tried to lay on the couch while the kids played.  Also, they thought playing peep eye with me when I hid my head under the blanket was hysterical.  

Then, of course, twelve hours after I come down with it my husband informs me that his throat is scratchy.  He then began to feel awful.  Here's what came to pass for him:

1. He took the afternoon off during the worst of it and came home.  He made his own lunch while I handled the kids.  Then he rested while they napped (which I did as well on my worst day) and watched tv with Caden when he awoke.  Miraculous isn't it?  The magical sitting-still-thing that Dad commands...  Then he cranked up his computer around 5:15 and worked for an hour while I watched the kids and made dinner.  Smartly, he did not consider that an invitation to take the night off and he put the kids down because it was his turn.
2. When feeling bad enough to just sit and close his eyes (in his chair, even while sitting in the kitchen floor) the kids... left him alone.  Can I get a little of that magic?!??
3. I'm not sure I'd trade places with him, b/c I got to fight through my sickness with yoga pants and a t-shirt on.  He had to wear work clothes.  He had to make sense, conversation and important decisions.  All while sitting at his computer all day in a basement office and then fighting traffic on the way home.

So who had it worse?  Don't know.  No time to figure it out.  Mommy is busy rearranging the playroom while wiping her nose.  Wrapping presents while rinsing her sinuses.  And planning holiday menus as she pops her cold meds and vitamin C like candy.  Somehow the kids don't buy my closed eye trick.  And neither does Santa.