Working around sick kids

I am still trying to get over being ticked off at Chris. Mid-morning Thursday Will’s teacher called—he was running a low temp and not eating well, and what did I want to do? Will’s daycare is very good, but they are sometimes fairly traditional, and the calling parents when the kid is sick is the biggest example of this. Even though I work thirty minutes away, when Will gets sick, they call me first, never mind the fact that Chris works five miles down the road. Because the mom takes care of the sick kids.

Then, we have the additional problem of our schedules. Mine is “flexible.” Chris teaches high school and his is not “flexible.” He has to get a sub—but I can just handily cancel class! Right? On Thursdays this semester, as a matter of fact, I don’t have class—so it’s no problem at all for me to leave work and take care of Will when he’s sick! Right? Obviously I don’t have anything more important to do!

Somehow I don’t seem to communicate well that just because my time at work is structured differently, I still regard my time as valuable. Nine times out of ten daycare calls during the day, Chris and I argue, and I end up leaving work. So I spent Saturday working in my office at school making up for Thursday, and then spent Sunday grading all day to catch up for Friday—which I won’t bitch about, because I didn’t feel so hot myself by then and so ended up staying home both with Will and on my own behalf. I had to rearrange my 101 students’ syllabus, but that gives them more time to work on their papers, so it’s not all bad, I guess.

I’m not a workaholic who doesn’t want to take care of my children when they’re sick (or well, for that matter). There is something wonderful about taking a nap with a sick child who sleeps better because his mommy is there. In fact when Chris does stay home with one of our sick kids, I think I bug him because I call pretty often to see how everything’s going—because I want to be there myself, and I know it’s hard to take care of a sick baby who has a Mommy hair fixation when he’s well, much less when he feels bad. And Chris is not an archaic caveman husband. He is wonderful with the kids and does a good share of our shared household duties. So I don’t know. There must be some better solution to these sorts of problems. But what is it?