A tea party with Scarlet and Shelby, their dolls

I dismissed the crying when I first heard it. I had just finished laying Ashlyn down for the night, and figured I'd give our 9-month-old a moment to calm down before intervening.

But after a minute, I realized that it wasn't her, after all. Leaving the office, I hurried to my older girls' room and found 4-year-old Noelle huddled in her small bed, coughing and crying inconsolably. Hearing the barky seal cough characteristic of croup, I felt dread even as I brushed aside my husband's worried exclamations and headed to the bathroom to turn on the shower. Gathering her in my arms, I carried Noelle into the bathroom and sat on the edge of the tub, rocking her gently. After a few minutes, when she failed to improve and seemed panicky about breathing, we decided that Tim would bring her in to the hospital to get checked out.

It was an unexpected twist to our night yet, on its own, it wouldn't have been that memorable. It was only afterward, when things fell apart, that I started to feel exasperated with life: