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Staying in PJs all day

It would seem that the mega-virus of the year has descended on our household. It started innocently enough over a week ago, when Cordy had a little cough. Most of her class had been sick, and while I knew kids share germs more than they share anything else, I still held out hope that maybe my preschool daughter wasn't as popular as I thought she was, and therefore had not been touched or breathed on by her classmates. No luck.

Soon the fever took hold, and this bug took down both Cordy and my husband. I spent several days comforting my husband as he tried to not cough up a lung, while chasing after Cordy to wipe her nose with a tissue before she wiped it on her sleeve. I was still feeling fine, as was Mira. But then on Thursday morning Mira gave a little cough, and as I looked closely I saw her nose looked a little moist. Oh no, I thought, she's sick too.

By Friday I was completely surrounded by sick, grumpy, miserable people. I was looking for any excuse to get out of the house and get away from them, but my husband felt too sick to care for the girls, so I couldn't escape. My mom came over for a little while, but didn't stay for long when she saw that our house was actually a plague house. Sadly, she's now sick, too.

On Saturday, after being the only person to survive the week without getting sick, I woke up with a sore throat. Oh, no - this can't be happening. The creeping ick took hold of me, and by Sunday morning I was pushing my husband over to make room on the couch so that I could join the ranks of the feverish and snot-laden. Cleaning the house was out of the question. Leaving the house was not in the plan. We put in only the bare minimum amount of work needed to get by, allowing more TV and more snacks to keep Cordy happy as we suffered through and hoped for the day to end quickly.

As parents, we all know that caring for children is no easy task. But when you're sick, it feels like an impossible feat. If they're sick too - meaning the amount of love/time/care is exponentially increased - you want to hide under your blanket and cry out for your mommy. It's so hard to give all of yourself to someone else when you barely have the energy to stand up. And when both parents are ill? It's practically Lord of the Flies.

While I'm still in the thick of this illness, my husband is better and has taken over much of the parenting duties so I can rest. I wish there could be some kind of biological rule that prohibited two parents from being sick at the same time, or at least prevented the kids from being sick at the same time as the parents. Because with an entire household full of sick people, the previous week feels like it never existed, and yet I still have so much to catch up on.

How do you take care of your kids when you're sick? Do you abandon the normal routine and resort to survival mode?