Saturday morning I was too sick to stand for very long. Sophie couldn’t understand why I couldn’t hold her. I was too sick to eat, almost too ache-y to even breastfeed Sophie. Ben watched her all morning.
Then he got sick.
I was better enough that I could watch her in the afternoon, but this watching involved lying in bed while she stood at the end of the bed, announced “Uh-oh” (in Sophie’s language, that means, “Something is falling,”) and then flung herself backwards onto the bed in a beautiful solo trustfall. Then she giggled at her own joke, scrambled up again, and did it again. I tried to teach her to say, “Timber,” but she was happy with “uh-oh,” and I was mostly napping anyway.
Fortunately, our neighbor Katie came by Saturday afternoon to take Sophie to the park, to give her some more interaction.
On Sunday, Sophie played scramble-over-daddy-while-he-sleeps-on-the-living-room-floor.
She even tried reading him a book while he slept. 
The saddest part of that photo is that I was so tired, I didn’t actively engage her either. I just snapped a photo.
Sophie’s one outing for the day was when her dad woke up and took her to the supermarket.
I asked my mother, “How do single parents get sick?” and she said, “They don’t.”
I’m slightly better today. The house is clean, the laundry is done, and we already went for a walk with a friend — but my students’ exams aren’t graded, my lectures for this week aren’t planned, my research-agenda is slipping behind-schedule, and I think I need to spend the whole day outside with Sophie, to make up for her weekend cooped up with two sick parents. Thank goodness that tomorrow is Veteran’s Day, so my classes are cancelled and I can catch up on work.
