There's probably few things as heart-wrenching as watching your own child being sick and miserable. Thankfully, we live in an age when these childhood illnesses are rarely life-threatening, but our primitive parental instincts are still calibrated from a time when half of all children didn't make it to their tenth birthday.

Scamper has been firmly in the "Miserable" column since last Thursday, when he was sent home early from preschool with a temperature. Since then, he's been up and down: better on Friday and Saturday, but worse on Sunday and today.

We kept both of the twins home on Friday, and they both slept for 18 hours straight (1 PM Friday to 7 AM Saturday). On Friday, all but three kids in the twins' preschool class were out sick, out of about 15. Skeeter, as you may recall, was home sick on Tuesday, but by Saturday morning seemed to have made as close to a full recovery as any child makes this time of year. Scamper still had a cough on Saturday, but seemed to be doing OK.

Sunday, Skeeter was fine, but Scamper was still under the weather. When we put the twins down for their naps at 1 PM, Skeeter was up again by 4, but Scamper slept all the way through to this morning. As he slept, we noted that his breathing was fast and shallow, and he would occasionally have little fits of coughing.

We'd been through this before, with Scooter, our older son (now 5). Scooter's first few winters were miserable, with several bad respiratory infections, and a regimen of albuterol and steroids for several months. Since then, Scooter's been healthy as a horse, and hasn't had any really bad winter illness since his third birthday.

So, when Scamper woke up coughing, congested, and miserable this morning, there wasn't much question that he'd be going to the doc. We were able to get an 8:40 appointment (they keep several slots a day open during the winter months for sick kids). The doctor confirmed what we'd already known, that he's got a bad respiratory infection, and an ear infection to boot. Prescription: antibiotics (for the ear infection), albuterol (to keep his airways open), lots of fluids, and lots of rest. In a few days, he'll be back up and running us ragged again.