A Cough In The Night: A Parent’s Nightmare

I’m a light sleeper. This needs to be said upfront. If there is a noise in the night I hear it. Except for my own snoring.

One of the most frightening noises in the night I’ve found, as a parent, is the child’s cough in the night. Not just any cough. THE COUGH. The one where you hear it and your think to yourself, “whelp, looks like I’ll be doing laundry at 2:30 AM”. That cough.

You are usually okay if it’s just one cough. I mean, hey, humans (yes, kids are humans) cough. But if you hear a bunch of them, strung together, and that last one sounds a little…wet? You better get yourself on your horse and in that kid’s bedroom. Oh, and on your way, grab whatever trash can, bucket, snow boot you can get. What you catch now, you won’t have to clean up later.

This happened last night, which is why I’m writing. I hear my 4 year old son in the other room, cough, and fight or flight kicked in. I got there in time, only without the bucket. That’s when I called for my wife for backup.

To be honest, though, I think I’m a bit lucky in this regard. I have a co-worker who has this happen like once a week and all night. Ours are more like twice a year and one and done. Stuff happens. Kid feels better. I wrote that last sentence because I don’t believe in jinxes. Fingers crossed.

So, whatever. I’m a bit tired today, but my wife has it worse. She’ll be home with both sickies today, most likely watching Disney all day. Maybe they’ll watch Wreck it Ralph again. That’s a good flick.

(note: this post also appears at my main blog paulliadis.com/blog I’m posting here as well because people actually read my stuff here)

The (new) Electric Company

Anybody remember The Electric Company tv show from when you were a kid? To be honest, I have vague memories about it. I remember Sesame Street and Mr. Rogers much more. Anyhow, there is a new Electric Company show on PBS, and my 4 year old is really into it. I have to admit that I am too.

You can learn more about  The Electric Company here (this is a link the the parent’s materials). It’s a good show. If you have a contract with the evil Comcast like I do, you can watch episodes for free “On Demand”. You can also watch free episodes at the pbskids.org website. My daughter likes to watch episodes multiple times (over the course of a week or so), which is repetitive, but also helps her learn.

Last night I printed out an activity for my daughter about the “silent e”. I cut out fourteen pieces of paper. I had my daughter draw a lowercase “e” on one sheet and I wrote words such as “bit”, “cap”, “mad”, and “scrap” on the other pieces of paper, per the instructions. I had my daughter read the words, then we added the “e” at the end and observed what this did to transform the words. We had a lot of fun with this. She surprised me, of course, with how many of the words she got on her own.

Anyhow, it was a fun little game to play. I wanted to share it here with all of you, in case you wanted to try it as well.