Sick Kid Etiquette

So the not so unofficial rule of parenting is if your kid is sick, you keep them away from other kids as much as possible. In general, this is a good rule. And I'm pretty good at following it. When Lily gets sick we don't go on play dates or to music class and we usually just chill at home taking it easy. 

Today that just wasn't going to cut it. I was antsy. I didn't want to watch a lot of TV. Lily doesn't sit still for very long when reading. I'm sick of the cold and wind. I'm too much of a wimp to brave it for a walk, and I didn't want Lily to be out in the cold too much. But we needed to go somewhere. She just had a runny nose, so I figured a museum would be ok. Public places are filled with germs anyways, so I thought she wouldn't be contributing too much to the germ pool. 

So we went to check out the Peggy Notebaert Nature Museum. I had heard about the Butterfly Haven as a good place to go with stuffed up kids. It's warm and humid and they can just wander around looking at butterflies and birds and plants and fish. And it's free on Thursdays! 

It was fun, but it was also packed. We stayed for about an hour before Lily was ready for a nap. She slept the whole way home, through a quick stop at the grocery store to pick up some soup for lunch, and all the way up until we got inside the apartment. 

She wasn't that interested in drinking water or milk today, and I don't want her to fill up on juice, so we had a tea party. With real tea. Barely warm herbal orange blossom tea, but real tea nonetheless. She thought it was great fun and gulped down a couple of teacups full. Then she was just more interested in pouring the liquid from the pot to the cup to the sugar bowl and back again. We might do it again tomorrow if she's still congested. 

So I apologize to any parents who took their kid to the Nature Museum today and they came home with a cold. What kinds of parenting faux pas do you commit?