Cancelled Plans

This weekend we had lots of plans. There was a great village festival going on where we live, where the whole community comes together once a year, with food and drink stalls, bouncy castles, games, music, dance and lots of other activities, as well as fireworks at night to finish off the day.

And because it was also Alex’s birthday weekend, we had planned to throw him a little birthday picnic with a couple of our friends and their kids. It was meant to be an action packed weekend full of fun. I’m not even going to mention the great, outdoorsy photo opportunities – especially, for once, of the four of us together – I was envisaging *such a blogger cliché, right?*.

Unfortunately, we had to cancel it all, because Alex got ill - again. 

When we picked him up from nursery on Friday evening, he was already flushed with a high temperature and looked quite sedated, not the usual chirpy little boy who instantly comes crawling to us, giggling and bouncing because he’s seen his Mummy and Daddy. He just sat there, looking very sorrowful and languid. 

We took him home and gave him our trusted Calpol, and after an epic puke which went literally everywhere, he went to bed, only to be waking and tossing and turning a lot throughout the night, with a high temperature.

On Saturday he got rapidly worse, and all day he was vegged out, mostly on me, drifting in and out of sleep every half an hour or so, and his temperature remained on a consistent 39.8 degrees, even though I was giving him alternating Paracetamol and Ibuprofen, and he had bad diarrhoea. 

He was bright red all over, literally boiling up, and he developed a rash on his chest and belly throughout the afternoon. We rang the out of hours doctors, but by the time they rang back, we decided it was too late to drag him out into a clinic and that he would probably be better off sleeping.

We had quite a rough night though, and I took him to the doctors this morning, who confirmed that he has a nasty virus and that his little body is doing its best to fight it. I’m supposed to give him a higher dose of Paracetamol and lots of fluids, but apart from that, there isn’t much that we can do for him.

I feel really sorry for him. He’s only just got over the illness last week. He’s otherwise such a bouncy and chunky and healthy boy, I don’t know why he is so prone to picking up every virus going. 

It’s really a case of “pass the bug” in our house at the moment. It’s a week when I’ve been feeling rough and ropey, too, having been diagnosed with two separate infections and been given a double dose of antibiotics to take, so it’s been all far from fun. And it’s always when I’m either on deadline at work, or it’s the weekend – there’s a pattern emerging there!

Anyway, I digress. I can’t say that I’m not gutted about cancelling his party. I had been planning it for weeks, it was supposed to be a cute pirate theme, and the weather was actually glorious all day, too, and it would have been the perfect day for a picnic. Not to mention the amount of party food I bought!

Nevermind, I guess that’s life with kids. We’ll have to reschedule his picnic and make the most of his actual birthday this week. Hopefully he’ll feel better then.

And we’ll be munching a ton of party food for the next few days. Mini sausage rolls for dinner, anyone?