Snot Stresses Me Out

I’ve written about snot before. It was this time of year.

I hate it. It stresses me out. Seeing a little nose running first thing in the morning, hearing the yucky cough and the stuffy head – it sucks the life right out of me.
Is it teething? Allergies? A cold? Ear infection? Sinus infection?

I’ve come to the conclusion that I’m destined to have snotty kids. It’s genetics. I’m still a snotty kid, but the difference is, I blow my nose when I need to instead of sniffing and snorting or just letting it run until I smear snot all over my face in annoyance.

My kids seem to live on Mucinex all fall, winter, and spring. Just like my brother and I lived on Sudafed. We took Sudafed like it was a vitamin, every single day. Ella’s been through allergy testing so we know that most of her snot is allergy-related. She’s a year-round Singulair taker, and we add Flonase and Mucinex as needed in the peak seasons. I suspect Luke is in a similar situation, though we haven’t seen an allergist for him yet. Also? He still has four molars to cut and when the snot coincides with loud grinding of teeth, it’s hard for me to believe it’s anything other than teething (regardless of what the pediatricians say).

Lord help me when they start bark-coughing. You know what that means, right? Croup. Which can be caused by a virus, bacteria, or, you guessed it, allergies. Any time Ella is snotty for a few days, she starts to bark-cough. It’s part of her deal.

But knowing what I know doesn’t make me less stressed about snot. Because I still have to decide if they can go to school/soccer/gymnastics/church. Is it safe to take them around Jake? Into public? I know that if they cough or sneeze, or God forbid, snot runs out, people are going to look at us like we’ve got the plague and think, “How could you bring that kid out like that, you moron?!”

I don’t send them or take them when they have fever or they are too miserable to play, but if I were to base the decision to leave the house on snot and coughing alone, I might as well pack them up and move to a cave in some foreign land until summer. I’m not sure I could get wireless internet in a cave in a foreign land and I’m certain all three of us would lose our flippin’ minds before summer, so that’s not an ideal solution. Thus, I’m left with deciding, on a daily basis from October to May, if the snot is just snot for snot’s sake or if they are genuinely sick and can’t be exposed to the public. Add to that the extra special bonus question: “Am I killing their livers with Mucinex?” and, well, I’m stressed out. For seven months. About snot.