Times have changed.

When I was a kid we had aspirin melted on a spoon with some water and a pinch of sugar. We had chewable orange St. Joseph's tabs which seemed to take forever to work but tasted pretty good. We also had the freezing cold, horrible tasting penicillin in the glass bottle again on a spoon. Once my mother took a spoon from Denny's when we were traveling across country so she could give me some medicine. We didn't have melt away tabs, chewable tablets or melting strips. We had suppositories if/when you were really sick those were fun. Heck we had rectal thermometers all greased up with Vaseline. Good times. Good times. My kids moan and groan that the thermometer that takes less than 30 seconds is taking too long. Oh the agony. When I was a kid we had to hang over our moms lap with our butt sticking up in the air waiting for the sand to go through the timer. (To which my son asked in amazement how long after that were watches invented?)

Now I have droppers and cups and fancy syringes. They are hard to clean, never seem to dry and they multiply if you don't keep on eye on them. We have bottles you have to hold upside down to get the liquid out (which is pretty neat if the bottle isn't too big then it's cumbersome!) and fancy colored rubber do hickeys on the bottles for each family member ( no need to read the label just remember which color each child is and why am I orange? I hate orange. Oh because mommy likes purple so Joe picked purple and now his is purple and it tends to confuse me but I take mostly pills and he's mostly liquid... now where was I?) We have melt away tabs, melting strips (they WILL melt in your hand if you're not quick and in the bath tub which Joe thinks is BIG fun and you can see $10 melt before your eyes!)

Dom hates all these cups and droppers and throws them out as soon as the boys are feeling better.

One night one of the boys woke up with a leg ache and I could not find a fancy cup, dropper or syringe. So I got spoon and some Tylenol and Dom almost died right in the hall. "What are you doing?" he asked. "I am doing what my mother and my grandmother and your mother did and using a G*& D&@# spoon!" And we all lived happily ever after.