1.  Revisited

2.  Reunion

3.  Respite

The Man came home at 10pm last night.  He went in the Big Bed, I went down with Son 2 aged 19m.  At 3am he woke, crying.  I went to him, he was hot, bothered and gasping for water.  I gave him water. He gulped and gulped.  I gave him Calpol and he slurped it down. I decided to change his nappy, and lay him down on the changing mat.  He threw up spectacularly, Reflux Revisited.  I put him in the shower, The Man came down.  “Is this wee?” he asked, dabbing at the pool on the changing mat. ”No he’s been sick.”  Son 2 eyed him, barely awake, and then buried his head in my shoulder.  We gave him more water.  He threw that up too.  Son 1 aged 4y 7m came in. “You were supposed to wake me up to see Daddy!” “We both tried but we couldn’t. You wanted to stay asleep.” He went upstairs with The Man, I held Son 2 upright in the armchair till he went to sleep, and then got into the double bed with him. 

By morning I had the bug too.  I was miserable and unable to eat, The Man was instantly in charge of all food and drink-making.    Son 1 was excited and ecstatic that he was back; “Where are we going, where shall we go?”   Very unhappy that we couldn’t go anywhere because Mummy and Son 2 were poorly.  During last summer’s nightmare Walk With Gastroenteritis, I read that stewed apple settles the stomach.  The Man peeled and microwaved an apple for Son 2.  He scoffed it. And then helped himself to a great whack of Son 1’s cottage pie lunch.  And ginger biscuits for pudding.  It all stayed down.

In the afternoon they played outside with the paddling pool, and then Son 2 broke down and started crying for me again. I put him down for his second sleep in his cot, and at 3.30 I went back to bed.  This was an Amazing Thing.  I don’t think I’ve had a daytime sleep since I was on maternity leave with Son 1.  I slept for an hour, till  Son 1 came up to tell me that he’d made some (cardboard) ice cream.  The dishwasher box has become his ice cream house.  He was painting it, in creative heaven,  in the kitchen, with The Man making tea and trying to be patient.  Son 2 woke up, and clung and cried.  But he packed away sausage and peas, and it stayed down.  At bedtime he wanted book after book, again, a Good Thing after so many days when he couldn’t be bothered.

1.  The First No

2.  Big Weld

3.  Ballet

4.  Superbug

Son 2 is Latin in his language acquisition.  His word for  ”yes” is “peeeez”, and he had no word for no, either shaking his head or pushing away with his hand.  This morning though, when I offered him some more milk, there was a clear, confident, grown up “no.” And then he went back to head-shaking and batting.  He looks awful.  Some chickenpox spot have scabbed; he’s picked some of the scabs off.  Great flaming red craters, each one with the potential to pock mark.  He at last ate something this morning.  He drank milk and ate hummous, grapes and banana.  He was clingy, tetchy, whining and tired. “All right,” I said. “We’ll put you back to bed.”  Then he threw up all over himself and the hall carpet. A great, chicken-soupy puddle.  Then over the kitchen floor.  I stripped him, put The Wiggles on upstairs and hunted for J cloths.  

They both came down within minutes.  Son 1 aged 4y 7m wanted his pancake.  It was straight out of the pan, cooling on a plate, but then I had to clear up after Son 2. ”Darling I can’t touch it while I’m clearing this up. If you want it, put your own lemon and maple syrup on. Just get your chair and get the lemon from the fridge.”  Clunk, as a little green Early Learning Centre chair was plonked against the freezer. Son 2 pulled baby wipes from the packed and stirred them into the water in the mop bucket.  Son 1 opened the fridge door, gazed in and sighed.  “Oh the lies I have told, the lives I have ruined.”     I looked up.  “Where’s that from?” “‘Robots.’” “Oh. Is it what the baddie says?” “No.  Big Weld says it when he meets the people.”  Of course he does.

Ankle deep in vomit, dirty washing, dirty floors, washing up and with a sick, clingy, crying baby,  I rang a Wednesday Mother.  “Are you better?  Can you have Son 1 this morning?” Yes she could. “Oh good, can you come and get him?”  Son 2 and I had a shower and I put him to bed.  He slept for three hours.  Son 1 was dropped back, scampering through the hall. “Son 2! Son 2!”  Still asleep.  Eventually I rang Wonder Nanny.  “Should I get him up?” “He’s never slept for three hours, even for me. His body clearly needs it. Just leave him.” He woke up within minutes, and wouldn’t eat lunch.  We went outside and played with the paddling pool.  I eventually found the puncture.  Son 1, naked,  pulled on one of the inflatable rings, wedged it round his hips just above his willy and pirouetted. “I’m a ballerina and this is my tutu!”  I took pictures for The Man.  

We went into The Town to find more calamine cream for Son 2. Superdrug didn’t have any.  We went into Marks. Son 2 threw up in the pram. I cleared him up in the ladies’ loo and we came home, Son 1 clambering on the Big Pram abover Son 2. Son 2 threw up in the lounge. I saved the soft furnishings by turning him round so he did it all over me.  I gave him white rice for his tea.  He threw up all over the kitchen. I put him to bed.  The Godmother, out for drinks in The Town, dropped off calamine cream from the Big Town and J cloths.

1.  Outbreak

2.  Outside

3.  Outcast

Son 2 aged 19m has had a pimple on his chest for the last four days.  A red, acne-style beacon, sitting there, shining, glowing. “If there were any more of those, I’d think he had chickenpox” I’d vaguely thought.  Son 2 has had odd spots before, none of which have turned out to be anything other than odd spots.  Yesterday, Son 2 was scratching behind his ear like a flea-bitten dog.  This morning, Son 2 had: spots behind his ears, spots in his ears, spots on his chest, spots on his head, spots on his back, spots on his upper arms, spots on his baby thighs and a big, horrid one right on his willy.    I texted Wonder Nanny, to tell her that the person with the NNEB training was in charge of putting calamine lotion on the wrigglest child in the world.  She rang back. On Friday, with still, just that lone blister, she’d stripped him naked and checked him all over, so sure was she then that he had chickenpox.

Son 2 slept.  We got the paddling pool out.   Son 1 aged 4yr 7m checked with Next Door to see if they’d managed to borrow a pump. Nope. But Next Door did know how to get into a coconut, so Son 1 scampered round, and sat out in the yard with Next Door Neighbour and a hammer.  They smashed it.  He brought it round our side, testing it. “I don’t like it. It’s like the milk.”  He went inside, I stayed outside to try to blow the pool up.  I managed, but it’s already got a hole in it.  From where i folded it.  After 15 minutes I went back into the house.  It was strangely quiet.  “Son 1!”  No answer.  “Son 1! Where are you?”  “Mummy I’m here,” came a strange, faraway voice.  Upstairs?  I went to the bottom of the first floor stairs. “Mummy!  Mummy!”  He sounded scared, which made me scared. “Where are you!”  “Out here!”  I peered downstairs.  A littleface peered in at the front door.  He’d gone out the front door and shut it. ”How long have you been out there?”  “Fifty years.”  Stuck.  Which, coincidentally, is a word Son 2 has started using only today.   Falling between the legs of the upturned toddler chair.  “Stug!  Stug!” 

After lunch, we went down to the Discount Store in search of a puncture repair kit. Stopping off for Nappies.  The Discount Store had sold out.  We headed back, past The Church, where it was Family Tea Time service day.  ”We can’t go,” I told Son 1. “Son 2 will give the other children chickenpox.” “I want to go,” said Son 1.  He scampered up the steps while I battled with the shopping and The Big Pram.  The Vicar and His Wife came out. “It’s good to see you. We don’t know how many others there’ll be.” Code for: No-one Else Is Here. As we went in, a few more families headed in through each door.  Enough for it not to be embarrassing.  The theme was Fish.  Right up Son 2’s alley.  Son 1 fished for magnetic fish in a (puncture free) paddling pool.  Son 2 made Hand Fish.  I drew round his hand, cut it out and then he earnestly squidged gold glitter paint on it.  Then we did Casting Your Net Over The Other Side.  And then tea. Fish Fingers.   Son 2 tipped a beaker of squash down his front, soaking his jumper and vest.  ”Oh dear,” said the Vicar’s Wife.  “Have you got any other clothes with you?”  “Just his coat,” I said. “I’ll change him when I do his nappy.”  “Oh you can change him here, no one will mind,” she said.  They will if they see The Plague Of The Boils, I thought, and retreated to the privacy of the tiny loo.

1.  Pool

2   Party 

3.  Playtime

Bloody paddling pool. When I got to bed, well after 12 last night, I thought “At least we can have a lie in tomorrow.”  0615.  Son 2 aged 19m wailing.  I ignored him.  He quietened.  A face appeared in mine. “Son 2’s awake.” “No-he-isn’t.-He-went-backtosleep.” Brightly: “Can we get up so I can look at that paddling pool?”  Son 1 aged 4y 7m and Son 2 pulled it out.  The box is size of a chessboard.  The deflated, folded-up pool is size of a parachute.    The Baby Was Born and could not be shoved back in.  One glance told me I couldn’t blow it up on my own. ”I think we’ll need a pump.  Next Door might have one. We’ll ask when they’re up.”  Son 1, still in his pyjamas, put his shoes on. ”I’ll go and see Next Door.” It wasn’t yet 7am. I blew a couple of inflatable toys up and they played with them.  “When can we put water in it?” “At Nanna’s.  Although you might not be able to go outside when we get there.   The forecast is for very heavy rain.”  “I don’t mind the rain,” said Son 1.

We went to a Nursery Fancy Dress party.  I had a good time and I think the children enjoyed themselves.  Son 1, who’s serene and unselfconscious about fancy dress and wanders round in pirate or Power Ranger gear when there is no occasion at all, refused to wear any of his costumes.  I didn’t question it.   A children’s entertainer, balloons and many many children.  The entertainer had apparently been doing children’s parties for 20 years.  Son 1 and Son 2 sat in for Pass The Parcel.  Son 2 got a lolly.  I could almost hear his brand-new teeth dissolving in the sugar as he crunched.  Their lunch consisted of:  the chocolate icing off the top of several fairy cakes, a chocolate biscuit.  Some iced biscuit rings.  Orange squash.   A dentist mother told me one day wouldn’t hurt, it was when it was spread over many many days that the damage happened.  I spoke to another mother who, it transpired, lives within a mile of us in The Town.   And she has A Girl!  Son 1’s new best friend,  I instantly decided.  As we walked back to the car: “Guess what, Son 1?  X lives very near to us!” “I don’t like X.”  “You probably don’t know her very well.  You can invite her to the house to get to know her better.”  “She’s not my friend.”  “Not yet, but - ” “I don’t like her.” “Why not?” “She’s a Gal.”

We got to Nanna’s via a Wednesday Friend to pick up their electric  pump. I stood outside Nanna’s house in the Arctic wind and lashing rain, pumping up the paddling pool from the cigarette lighter. Son 1 was beside himself with excitement.  They both went outside with it, we added water and stood back.  The sky was black with great heavy clouds rolling across without a break. It was very cold, very wet and very windy.  Son 2 burst into shivering tears and I took him inside.  Nanna had prepare a tea which was waiting in the kitchen.  Son 2 just pointed at it all and demanded to eat.  In the end we moved tea early, and they went back in the paddling pool after.  And then real, heavy, horrible rain came in. “Rain,” said Son 2, as it hammered against the windows. ”Rain.  Rain. Rain.”  After they’d gone to sleep I had to go out to the car in a cold monsoon and gather up the damp, half-deflated paddling pool, and a couple of bags I’d left.  within two trips I was soaked and freezing.  “Rain,” I thought. “Rain, rain, rain.”

1.  Comprehending

2.  Coconuts

3.  Clarifying

Son 2 aged 19m wept, tantrumed and screamed as Son 1 aged 4y 7m and I left the house this morning.  In Wonder Nanny’s arms, he gazed through the window at us as we got in the car.  It’s borne in on me that the poor little mite has no way of understanding why Mummy and Son 1 are going off together and leaving him.   Memo.  Lots of books about school/nursery from now on.   Stick with him the whole weekend.    He started his tantrum about 20 minutes before we left, when I did my usual slow, clear and repetitive “Mummy and Son 1 are going to say goodbye.”  So Being Positive, another Sign Of Excellent Receptive Language.

Son 1 and I went to Tesco for a Big Shop after I picked him up from Nursery.  He was amazingly well-behaved.   We spotted marked-down coconuts in the yellow-sticker trays.  “My whole life I have always wanted a coconut,” he said, sitting in the 15 kg max weight seat and stripping some of the fibre off the shell.  “Mummy how do we open it?”  ” I don’t know, I can’t remember.  I thought you wanted to make a hole in it and drink the milk. ” “Yes I do, but what shall we use?”  “I don’t know, we’ll have to wait till we get home and see what we’ve got.  We used to have hours of fun trying to get into coconuts when I was small.”  “What did you do to get in?”  “Don’t know, my dad used to do it. Smashed them to smithereens.”  “How did he smash them?”  “Can’t remember. I think he used to just throw them on the floor, very hard.”  Son 1 peered down over the side of the shopping trolley.    ”Don’t even think about it,” I growled.

He behaved impeccably, didn’t pester, didn’t whine, got down from the trolley and trotted around happily holding his coconut. “They have these in Aloha Scooby Doo.”  So back home I showed him the paddling pool I’d bought from TK Maxx.  He can’t wait.  But the weather has turned, and a loud lightning/driving rain thunderstorm moved slowly over us this evening.  “I don’t mind playing in it in the rain.”  I got into a coconut hole with a metal skewer.  Wonder Nanny stuck a straw in so Son 1 could, like Shaggy and Scooby drink the milk.  “I don’t like it.”   Son 1 brought Son 2 a book about fish back from Nursery.  Son 2 is obsessed with it.   He has a word for Shark, and Boat, and Bus, and Please, and Banana, and Car, and Down, and Upstairs and Outside, and Bubble.  Still not quite recognisable to anyone except those who adore him… but we think he is a Miraculous, Magical Marvel.