Sick children: a balanced view

Good things about sick children:

• Having sick children provides a break from the quotidian, a change from the ordinary, and makes you once again appreciate the pleasant routine of normal life. To which you will never return. DOOOM.
• They nap. For hours. Bliss.
• They're too tired to be naughty, so they're sweet and adorable all the time.
• They love cuddling. They just want to be close to you. You feel needed and special.
• Bedtime is so easy. They conk out on the sofa, you put them in bed, the end.

Bad things about sick children:

• Prime puking and/or fever time is in the middle of the night, exactly when you'd most like to be getting some rest and girding your own immune system against falling prey to the same thing.
• Whichever spot you haven't quite covered with a waterproof sheet or a precautionary towel is exactly where they'll manage to barf every time. They will also get their pyjamas and their hair on the way, and probably some totally different area you won't even notice until tomorrow.
• All that napping in the middle of the day means that at some point you will be faced with children who are convinced that 2.30am is when they need to get up and go downstairs to play. Both at once.
• You are the only person who can make them feel better. You can never leave. Don't even try.
• They love cuddling. Especially just before they throw up, or at 4am when you'd really like an hour or two alone in your own bed.
• They still wake up at 6am.
• Even when they're better, they've completely upset their eating and sleeping patterns and may never return to them. DOOOOM.

Sick, baleful Mabel says you are doooooomed.