I had to take the past day and a half off because Olivia caught some type of virus and her fever has gone back and forth for the past two days. 

This morning she woke up just slightly warm and said to me: “Mommy, I am feeling normal. I can go to daycare today”. Really couldn’t afford to take another day off, I was glad to hear that.  

Then after I got back to my desk from a meeting at about 4:30PM, there was a voice mail from the nurse at the daycare saying that Olivia developed a temperature of 100.5°F and had been gagging many times in the afternoon. So I tried to finish up what I had to do as fast as I could (wished I could give it to somebody else but could not) then her primary teacher called saying her fever escalated to 101.5°F.  

Olivia looked tired but better than I expected. She said to me: “Mom, I am perfectly fine except that I am 100 degrees and felt like throwing up like six times this afternoon. Ms. Margo (nurse) and Ms. Sharon were really worried about me and that’s why they called you.”   

We went to the Toddler’s playground to pick up Evan and saw him sitting in the sand box looking lethargic. Oh, oh, I started to have a bad feeling. Sure enough, his teacher told me that Evan hadn’t been feeling well.  After he saw me, instead of screaming “Mommy, mommy” and running towards me fully charged like what he normally would do, he did not move at all. He just looked up at me with his big eyes and with a very soft voice, said: “Mommy, I am sick.” He felt very warm on his forehead and his hands felt very cold.  He apparently was having a fever.

I was not very happy that the teacher did not let me know about this earlier and still let him sitting in the sandbox without the jacket on for who knew how long (it was chilly outside today if you do not move around). To make things worse, the teacher told me that after the kids played for a while in the playground after nap, they could not find Evan and finally found him sleeping in the sand by the slide.  

My poor baby, imaging Evan sleeping in the sand outside in the wind with a thin shirt on just broke my heart. I am sure that contributed quite a lot to his fever. With a tight feeling in my throat, I picked up Evan. He immediately laid his head on my shoulder and wrapped his hands around my neck and closed his eyes. 

Now I have two sick kids and I have only worked a day and a half this week. The nurse’s note indicated at Olivia has to be symptom free for 24 hour before she could return to daycare. As much as I want to stay home to take care of them, I called my husband to take tomorrow off and who is going to take Friday off is still up in the air (assuming Evan won’t get better in just one day).

I know my sick children are my highest priority but for some reason I always have this guilty feeling when I have to stay home taking care of them for more than a day at a time, especially when it happens multiple times. To me, although nobody including my boss would say anything about it, it is never a good thing to let people remember you as someone missing work a lot no matter what the reasons are. I just can not get over it and I hate this feeling.