Gehst du zu erbrechen?

Germs and illness have been on our minds pretty much constantly for 3 days now. I'm dreading the possibility of one of my older boys catching Trent's flu, because worse even than the prospect of vomiting or death is being too sick to go trick-or-treating. Can you imagine the horror? Waiting all year to greedily gather up chocolate and lollipops from the neighbors, and then being forced to lay on the couch and drink apple juice instead? Nightmarish.

So last night, after depositing Trent at home and drugging him up with his meds, I had to go run an errand. Well, I hate to go anywhere alone, (thus the fear of dying, but that's another story), so I bribed Ethan to come with me by promising him a soda from McDonalds. That boy is a sucker for the adult treats, and also anything that he gets and his brothers don't. That's why we hide the Reisens and only eat them when the kids are in bed.

So off we went to complete our errand. We pulled up to the McDonalds drive-thru and collected our drinks. As I was leaving the parking lot, Ethan sneezed three times. Normally, I wouldn't have thought twice about it, but in my Halloween vs. Swine Flu paranoia, I immediately assumed that we were about to embark on a month long tour of duty through Influenzaland as the virus spread slowly and deliberately through each and every one of my family members.

When Ethan had finished achoo-ing, I asked him if he felt alright.

"Yeah," he said with his trademark nonchalance, "I've been blessing at school for a few days, but I'm fine."

That nearly became the second time this month that I shot soda through my delicate nasal passages.

Nothing like a good laugh at your child's ignorance. I mean innocence. Once I got my giggles under control, I clued Ethan in to the fact that it's called "sneezing", not "blessing". Now we're going to start saying, "Gesundheit" after a person sneezes, just because I like the idea of a very confused bilingual child.