Sometimes, it doesn’t matter what you do. You can feed your kid the healthiest diet on the planet, avoiding every food allergen and rivaling the local nutritionist for your skillful balancing of fat, protein and carbs. You can be downright vigilant about their diet, dress them warm, wash their hands, and keep them away from the neighborhood runny noses. You can vacuum their rooms every day, run an air purifier while they sleep and have dust mite covers on the bed.

And sometimes, it still doesn’t matter.

For the past 3 months, my allergic family has been getting sick pretty much every week – with the exception of the week between Christmas and New Years. That might be the ultimate irony, given that Christmas is the prime dietary infraction season. (Because my kids don’t have life-threatening food allergies, it’s much tougher to get others to treat them seriously.) In any case, you’d think if they were going to get sick, it would be then, when their immune systems were being irritated by things they shouldn’t have.

I think my daughter first got sick in the beginning of November. She had some nasty intestinal flu, reminiscent of Norwalk virus. If you’ve never had a visit from Norwalk, I don’t recommend it. I believe she spent one night throwing up about every 1.5 hours or so. I’d just get back to sleep and then I’d be racing down the hall again to the sound of her crying – only to have to strip the bed one more time.

When it’s the middle of the night, your brain doesn’t always function as it would in the daylight hours. Each time I made the bed and got her back to sleep, hope would spring eternal that she’d just stop now.

I ran out of sheets before she was done.

Two or three nights later, my husband started “going at both ends”, as the expression goes. He was up at least every hour. I figured he had a more severe version of what our daughter had. Just one of those things.

About half a week later, my daughter was throwing up in the night again. Then, she got diarrhea. Eventually, she was up every 30 to 45 minutes going at one end or the other. Are you thinking what I’m thinking? Yes, dear readers – she had caught the bug my husband had.

Well, you have to be fair when you trade. Three nights after that, my husband was throwing up every 1.5 hours or so.

We got a break of almost 6 days I think. Then my son came home with a wicked respiratory cold that had him running a fairly high fever and complaining of body aches. Oh, and because he’s got environmental allergies and his lungs generally react to respiratory bugs, it also sounded like a harbor seal had moved in with us.

It took me about a week to get him through this. I was using everything in my arsenal from homeopathics, to vitamins, to herbal remedies – and was diligently allergy-free in my meals.

My daughter got this one too. Both kids were as sick of being sick as I was of nursing them.

We made it to my mother’s 70th birthday party the following weekend. I was feeling a bit off, but nothing major. Well, turns out my kids had given that our latest viral visitor to me. By this point, we were just into the second week of December and I was hoping to have everyone clear by Christmas.

My husband joined the fun yet again before it was all done. In fact, he used up all his sick days – and had to call some of our convalescence “vacation time”.

As of December 23rd, I had everyone well and was madly making allergy friendly goodies. A blissful, healthy 10 days followed. By January 5th, the kids started back to nursery and elementary school, and I was looking forward to a break.

I was feeling a bit like a wet dishrag by this point. Lack of sleep is tough for any parent – and I claim a bit more sympathy because I’m in my late 40′s. (Not that anyone actually gives me more sympathy.)

Then, Number 1 son started to complain. His ear was popping. He was clearing his throat. The delightful daughter started to look a bit off – but nothing specific.

The second week of January, in the middle of the night, I was rushing my littlest one to hospital. She was wailing in pain. The diagnosis was a serious infection. The treatment was antibiotics so strong, they probably killed off everything in her from stem to stern.

I was actually somewhat happy about that. I figured that no self-respecting germ would be caught anywhere near her.

Then the school called for me to pick up my son. He had a severe earache. We had another prescription for antibiotics and a second child at home, sick.

We got through the medications and I started the kids on probiotics right away. I figured we needed to get the friendly bacteria in there, so that we could quit struggling with any nasty ones. I was extra vigilant with diet and started making my kids eat grapefruit on a daily basis.

Well, just last week, we had one more terrible night as I rushed my daughter to the hospital again. This time, it was croup – probably viral. She had been struggling for breath so hard that she was almost throwing up trying to get it in.

After all this, I can say with absolute assurance – you can do everything right and they can still get sick.

Here’s hoping we are done for the winter.