Fully sick

The name of today is Monday. BallFiend has been learning the days of the week at kinder. He came home one day and said to me, "Mum, did you know there are seven days of the week?" and proceeded to recite them to me: "Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Sunday, Friday". A few days later, he had it down pat: "Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday".

Anyway, Monday is swimming lesson day, and an exercise in logistics requiring military precision:

• 7.00 am: Get up out of bed (harder than it sounds when Thumper has woken us up at 3 am and kept us up till after 4 am). Get myself showered and dressed, leaving DeepSpice to tend the young'uns... that is, start on getting them dressed and fed.
• 7.30 am: Discover that DeepSpice has got as far as getting breakfast cereals into bowls on the bench and milk out of the fridge and on to the bench, but not actually poured onto cereal yet. Spot kids playing, and still in PJs. 
• 7.35 am: Find clothes and dress the slippery eels kids. Dressing Thumper is relatively straight-forward, except for those times when she does her over-cooked spaghetti impersonation and goes all 'boneless'. Thankfully, she's decided to be al-dente today. BallFiend takes a lot longer because: (a) he dresses himself; (b) he has to hold a ball whilst dressing himself; (c) he has to run about the house playing with said ball in between putting on each item of clothing. 
• 7.45 am: Sit Thumper in the highchair with a bowl of Vitabrits. Place BallFiend's breakfast on the table. Sit down and attempt to eat my breakfast.
• 7.46 am: Get up to replenish Thumper's bowl of Vitabrits. 
• 7.50 am: Encourage, cajole, nag, suggest, nag, remind, nag and shout at BallFiend to: (a) come to the table; (b) eat his Vitabrits; (c) 'turn around and eat facing the table and stop dropping food on the floor!'; (d) 'keep eating and stop playing with your spoon/placemat/ball/other distraction'; until a sufficient quantity of breakfast has finally been eaten... 
• 7.59 am: Hand damp face-washer to BallFiend and use another to wipe up Thumper, the mess on and under the highchair. Extract Thumper from highchair. Quickly wipe up mess on floor before Thumper walks through it. 
• 8.00 am: Start packing kids bags, making snacks to take to pool. No sandwiches for lunch today because there's no bread, again. 
• 9.30 am: Encourage, cajole, nag, suggest, nag, remind, nag and shout at BallFiend to put shoes on, go to toilet, get ready to go, etc., etc. Change Thumper's nappy.
• 10.00 am: Departure, Take 1. Strap Thumper into car seat, ask BallFiend to get into car. BallFiend announces "I have a poo!". Unstrap Thumper and return to the house. Assist BallFiend with wiping up after the event. Encourage, cajole, nag, suggest, nag, remind, nag and shout at BallFiend to put his pants back on, flush toilet, wash hands, dry hands. All things that he would be able to do much more quickly if he would only put down that ball for a moment! 
• 10.15 am: Departure, Take 2. Strap Thumper into car seat, ask BallFiend to get into car. BallFiend rants that he wanted to be strapped in first. Briefly consider unstrapping Thumper then decide to weather BallFiend's tantrum instead, in the vain hope that he will learn an important life lesson (which he probably will, but that won't come back to benefit me for another 25 years). Strap BallFiend in. Strap myself in, start engine. Drive down driveway. Realise I have forgotten Thumper's blankie. Turn off car and return to house (leaving kids strapped in). If someone is fool enough to kidnap them, then so be it.
• 10.30 am: Departure, Take 3. Return to car with blankie. Drive off to Gran and GrandPaul's house. Deposit a protesting Thumper. On our way again.
• 10.45 am: Arrive at swimming pool. Quickly help BallFiend change into bathers (amazing how cooperative he becomes when it is all about getting into a swimming pool). Time for 10 mins of playtime until the lesson with Nuccio. 
• 11.00 am: Lesson starts. Quick chat with The Bibliophile, MasterW and LittleMissIz before nicking out to cafe to start reading the next book for my bookgroup. 

After the swimming lesson, I dragged a protesting BallFiend to the change rooms. He wants to play in the pool longer. But I know he needs to go and get fed, ASAP, before a hunger-induced meltdown occurs. We join The Bibliophile, MasterW and LittleMissIz at a local eatery, as we often do. Today it is Al-Alamy for some Lebanese pizzas. Part way through his cheese calzoni, BallFiend announces that he won't eat anymore because he feels sick. Not like him at all, as he loves cheese and simple carbs, which is all that the cheese calzoni is, and he is usually starving after swimming. But then he and MasterW start running around the store, so I dismiss the idea that he is really sick. They go up and down the aisles with all the loose nuts in tubs. I chase after him and tell him not to go near the nuts (BallFiend has a serious nut allergy).

Then BallFiend and MasterW settle in front of the drinks fridges and start rolling BallFiend's "soccerball beach ball with a bell in it" back and forwards, continuously getting in the way of passing customers. ThePupperMaker arrives with her son MasterD (whom we know from 3 year old kinder) and the ball rolling game gets taken up a notch, then it is back to running around the aisles next to the nuts.

We decide to make a hasty exit and The Bibliophile suggests that I drop BallFiend off at her place so that he and MasterW can have a play while I do my shopping. We wander back to our cars, with our cute little boys holding hands and chattering away to each other. Then head back to The Bibliophile's house. Once there I stop for a cup of tea and shortly after, BallFiend resumes his complaint about feeling sick and wanting to go home.

I dismiss this at first, as he often gets into a sullen mood these days with no obvious reason and/or claims to be sick as a means of getting his way. But as I watch him over my cup of tea, I can see him looking more and more pale. His posture looks awkward and uncomfortable. He says he is cold, yet it is a beautiful 24 degrees. I touch his torso and feel heat radiating from his skin. OK, so he has a temperature and he really is a bit sick. So I ask him to lie on the couch and wait while I finish my cup of tea and get ready to go. He refuses at first, insisting that he needs his dummy and blankie to rest. Five minutes later, he is sound asleep.

I carry him to the car and drive home. Then carry him to his bed. Seconds later he starts vomiting... I catch it in the only thing to hand: his precious blankie. I clean him up, take his temperature (just under 40 degrees) and give him some Panadol. Then he vomits again. But he feels marginally better now and lies down, falling straight back to sleep. By now it is about 3.30 pm and I ring Gran and GrandPaul to ask them to drive Thumper home.

At 7 pm, I wake BallFiend and check his temperature again. It's come down to 37.8 degrees and he is much chirpier, but still feels sick. So I get him ready for bed and convince him to drink a little bit of water (he refuses a Hydralyte iceblock or apple juice) . He's asleep again by 8 pm, and Thumper not long after.

Thankfully, has DeepSpice put on the washing, so I don't have to deal with cleaning up all the vomited on things (including my pants!). Here's hoping that he is all better tomorrow and more importantly, that Thumper doesn't catch it.
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