Our household has raised the Plague Flag in recent weeks, meaning poor No.2 hasn’t had a great finish to her time with Mummy being at home. She’s on chickenpox alert, as big bro picked up chickenpox from nursery about a fortnight ago. He got off unbelievably lightly, as you could count his spots on your fingers, and with only one actually breaking the skin. While she has been really ill, it’s only been a terrible case of manful that nearly killed me (but had minimal effect on Mummy…), meaning we’re in partial quarantine while we wait for the spots or a serious sense of disappointment if she doesn’t get it… This has of course destroyed her and Mummy’s sleep, just in time for Mummy to go back to work.
And then we got an email from the nursery saying there’s a confirmed case of Scarlet Fever – it’s part Hornblower and part Dickens at the moment.
This had unfortunate knock-ons to our social lives, with grandparents being waved off, and No.2 (and Mummy) having to stay behind while Junior (who is now all-clear) and I went to party at a wedding, and for him to spend some quality time with said grandparents. He had a whale of a time, with limited numbers of children meaning he was able to spend some quality time running round like a lunatic with the equally game 2 yo flower girl – I think the wedding photographer took as many shots of them as he did the bride and groom.
In terms of the first day, it went better than last time, mostly because I knew to expect the lack of napping and the crying. An unfortunate effect of the illness appears to be a loss of appetite (I had this too), which means she found it pretty tough going, especially as we hadn’t been able to practice with milk from a bottle/beaker. Bizarrely the most successful method of ingesting formula (we’re going straight to it this time, no faffing with expressing in work for Mummy) was to drink straight out of the beaker with no lid. However as she only had about 30 ml across the day, that’s still not exactly a great flow rate! However Mummy reminded me that Junior was very slow to start, until he turned into the industrial vacuum pump he remains.
Hopefully tomorrow we’ll be a bit more adventurous, although that will depend on Daddy correctly reading the nap signs, and No.2 following through on those threats and actually having one before 3pm.
I should note that I do have a whole load of blogs in my head about the last few weeks, but between doing things, illness and the time that just somehow disappears when looking after 2 kids haven’t quite go round to writing. I promise to write them before I finish my leave…
Add Dad Time 