Tag: sick kids

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The Great Camp Adventure, Family FUNdraising for SickKids




This post is brought to you by The Canaccord Genuity Great Camp Adventure benefiting SickKids.

We all want our children to be good, generous, kind and giving. We especially want that when they’re embroiled in a protracted battle with their siblings in the middle of a six-hour car ride. But that’s another story.

We already know how important it is to role model the kind of behaviour we want to see from our children. We see how powerful that influence is when they decide to donate half their piggy bank to a good cause (or when they sound just like you when they lose their temper, whichever.) But what could be better than doing something fun and worthwhile together as a family?

This September 28, The Great Camp Adventure is a one-day, challenge-by-choice, camp-themed, FUNdraising walk for the entire family. All proceeds go to the Sick Kids Possibility Fund where they can support the hospital’s most urgent needs.

The Great Camp Adventure is designed to be a day of fun for the entire family and beyond, from babies to grannies, neighbours to coworkers. Have fun making your way along a 20km route (go as far as you like, no need to do the whole thing!) with lots of campsite-style pit stops full of snacks and activities along the way.

Register now to get your FUNdraising game on. There’s a $500 fundraising minimum for adults and $150 for children which makes this an incredibly easy way to get your whole family working together for a good cause. Have a few more questions? No worries. Head over here to fill out a request for more info.

I honestly can’t think of a better way to spend a day with my family.

This post is sponsored by The Canaccord Genuity Great Camp Adventure. Opinions and words are still mine, of course.

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5 Reasons Parents Can’t Clock an Entire Work Week to Save Their Lives

  1. A kid is sick. If there is vomiting or a fever of some form of skin rash, you will generally concede that your kid is sick and needs to stay home. You may need to keep multiple children home because carting two kids back and forth to school or the sitter with a puke-y sib in tow isn’t fair to anyone. Alternatively, one of the babysitter’s kids could get sick.

  2. A kid could think he’s sick and then be totally fine. Like, a six-year-old boy could wake up in the morning clutching at his stomach and then proceed to eat one and a half bagels but still insist on feeling sick. You may be highly suspicious of this stomach malady but if he’s never tried to get out of school before you’ll  still believe him. By 10am even he will admits he’s perfectly fine, never felt better,  for example.

  3. A kid could claim to be sick, actually vomit all over the kitchen floor when you refuse to believe it and then STILL turn out to be totally fine. Because maybe what she was complaining about was a sore throat, by which she actually meant she had some phlegm caught in her throat, but she couldn’t actually say that because she’s only four. That phlegm, coupled with the most sensitive gag reflex in the history of the world, could cause her to actually vomit a small amount of real vomit on her way to the breakfast table. Instant win, she’ll get to stay home (as do all the others because you don’t want hurling at the side of the road), and will be totally fine, running and dancing and begging for food by 10am. Hypothetically.

  4. A kid could be perfectly healthy and still have to miss school for a doctor’s appointment. Between regular checkups, dentists appointments, emergency room visits for head injuries, and having to return to the hospital for cast removal, stitches or x-ray results it’s a wonder kids ever get to school. Or perhaps your doctor insists on seeing your perfectly healthy toddler every three months for no reason other than she’s skinny just like her brother of sister.

  5. All the kids are healthy, but you are sick. Every once in a while some little bastard of a virus will wipe you right out no matter how convincingly you tell yourself to, “Suck it up, Rebecca. You can’t get sick.” If you actually manage to get sick enough that someone else has to take care of the kids, though, it’s almost as good as a vacation.

Of course, if you have three kids like me, you can actually multiple this list times three and that makes 15 reasons why you are a professional disappointment. So cut yourself some slack.

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The Kids Are Throwing Up

We now return to our regularly scheduled programming that was briefly interrupted by Attack of the Vomit-Spewing Zombies. My kids got sick, guys, and I couldn’t find time to write. But this is how you know this blog is for real: inconsistent quality and quantity of posts, blurry pictures of my kids and tea rings on your computer screen.

It started with a string of messages left both on the answering machine at home and on my cell phone’s voice mail. Well, I guess it really started with the text message I got from Ed, because who can be bothered to check voice messages anymore? And why is it that I never miss a call from some other guy’s collection agent, but the one time the school calls my phone goes into silent mode? But I digress. The messages (all of them) said that Colum had been throwing up in his classroom and asked that I bring him home.

So I wrestled the girls back into the coats and boots we just took off and went to get him. I marched right into the office, looked around, but couldn’t see him. “He’s out in the hallway,” the secretary said. And there he was, slumped over on a re-purposed church pew with an industrial-sized garbage can strategically placed within heaving distance.

Flashback to 1990! I was in the sixth grade and in the midst of ultra-serious, private Catholic school, mid-term exams. My teacher reluctantly sent me to the office to call my parents when I insisted that I was sick. Walking through the hall, I realized I wasn’t going to make it home. I wasn’t even going to make it to the nearest bathroom. I bee lined it for a garbage can, emptied the contents of my virus-riddled stomach and then continued to the office.

The secretary was wary. Was I really sick during the exam period? Wasn’t that just a little too convenient? Then she got called out into the hallway. “Rebecca, did you throw up in a garbage can?” she asked when she got back. I nodded and tried very hard to blend in with the office furniture. “Why didn’t you go to the bathroom?” She was relentless. “I, er, didn’t have time?” 

And there I sat in a miserable heap until they were able to reach my dad (which was no small feat in the mesozoic pre-cell phone era) and he came to pick me up. But at least they knew I wasn’t faking.

My poor boy. The endless wait in an institutional corridor, the taste of your own vomit lingering in your mouth: I know it well. I collected him and his school bag while his teacher gave me instructions on laundering his coat and his uniform, letting him rest and giving him lots of fluid such as apple juice and chicken broth. I assume that’s because he thinks I am a teenaged mother who doesn’t know any better. It’s very flattering.

We went home to rest and while Colum was still sick, he didn’t vomit anymore. Irene was also under the weather but mostly managed to avoid throwing up. Mary, on the other hand, was in great spirits, had tons of energy and a ravenous appetite. She would demand snacks and run around and play and then calmly puke in the middle of the floor every couple hours. I won’t even tell you about how I let her fuss for a couple minutes at nap time only to discover she had “settled down for her nap” in a pool of her own vomit. For shame.