Cartoon coma

Normally I don't mind when my kids veg out in front of the TV. Anyone who has met them can say they have plenty of energy and they use it almost every waking hour of the day. No danger of mine becoming overweight couch potatoes.

I've asked other mom friends if their kids get as stir crazy as mine. They don't. Mine are the only ones I've found who LITERALLY run laps through my house in that cluster of an hour between nap and dinner time. And sometimes the other hours of the day too. OK, more than sometimes. Daily.

So it makes no sense that I get the Mommy Guilts when I plunk a sick child in front of cartoons. It's logical - they need to sit and relax so they can get better, and preschoolers and toddlers don't quite understand the "sleep it off" concept that I adore.

Not that I've slept anything off in a long, long time. Can't say I've slept anything on either. Sleep? What's that?

When my little man came down with a fever and passed out on the couch before dinner yesterday, I was hoping that the bug would be through his system by this morning. Alas. So no preschool (I didn't have the heart to tell him he was missing), and we stayed in jammies for a long time. I may or may not still be in my pajama pants. Nobody saw me get the mail today. You can't prove anything.

But we milked the Disney Channel for most of the morning, turned it off to play for an hour or so before lunch, which he did not want to eat (top sign he was sick). So we watched Sesame Street and then I talked him into "resting" in his room after another dose of tylenol. He agreed (another sign he was still sick) and "rested" for 2.5 hours. This is the same boy who hasn't napped regularly in 6 months.

But he did wake up on his own with no fever, so I was hopeful we'd turned the corner. He was reluctant to eat dinner, but came around. Halfway through his bowl of mac n cheese, he said his tummy hurt. I banished him to the couch to lay down and thank goodness for DVR, because the preschool cartoons are slim pickins this time of day.

So the cartoons will last another hour or so until I can throw both kiddos in the tub and justify an early bedtime. Hoping that more sleep will me tomorrow we can go back to normal. The silence today was unnerving. I guess I'd be grateful for a little chaos. But I didn't say that. No, really I didn't. Maybe I'm getting sick...