The Growing Pains Remedy

This is obviously my cousin and not me with my kids - see how smiley they all are?

It never fails. You are dog tired from a long day of t-ball and your oldest child wakes you by wailing about his leg hurting while simultaneously climbing into your bed. Great... You wake, throw off your covers (hopefully forcefully enough so your snoozing spouse is aware of how huge an inconvenience this is for you), and you stumble out of bed. The growing pains remedy...

First, you search for the Tylenol in the dark because turning on lights would wake you up too much and probably wake up the younger child, too. Tylenol found you struggle to remember in your sleepy fog, "is this the kid who gets 2 teaspoons or 1" -it's an important differentiation. Then you give him a glass of water because - I don't know, it just helps...

Back upstairs you are padding around the foot of your other child's bed for the heat pack you made just for these crisis. This heat pack is a little pocket of fabric that you filled with dry white rice. A few seconds in the microwave and you are on your way to a sleeping child. First you must convince said child that heat packs really do work (just like they have the last 9 times you made him feel better). Heat pack finally on, your child finally silent, you quietly creep back downstairs to slip quietly back into bed (but not so quietly, you still want your spouse to know that you have just taken care of things and he owes you a great debt of gratitude). Sleep is yours at last.

Then you wake up to discover your other child has pink-eye!