Friday yet?

What a week and it's only Wednesday.

Sunday night, Elliot spiked a fever. It was 103 in his ear, which means it was at least 104 internally. (I refuse to subject my 3 yr old to a rectal thermometer!) Monday morning, he was so polite and good natured. Jay and I looked at each other with alarm. Who.was.this.child??? (Especially since both Sat & Sun mornings he went batshitinsaneballistic.)

At lunch time, he said the blueberries hurt his mouth. Thinking they might be stuck between his teeth, I peeked inside. And saw that he had strep throat. It was the Natal Day holiday Monday, and there was only 1 walk in clinic open in the city that we could find, so off we set. After 2.5 hours, we got confirmation and a prescription for amoxil. Which took over 24 hours to kick in. He's been batshitinsane since then.

Tuesday I took Felix for his 1 year check up and shots. Poor little monkey SCREAMED with totally justified rage when his nice dr jammed the 1st needle in his thigh. I was nursing him at the time and his mouth opened wide, dribbling the unswallowed milk everywhere. His hemangioma darkened to a deep purple, almost black and for a moment I thought 'Here goes. THIS is the time it will just rocket off his face and drench us all in gore.' But it settled down. Poor boy. He'd been happily smiling and playing peek a boo with the dr moments before, and now he was buried in my neck, shooting highly distrustful and pissed off looks out at her.

He settled down enough, then it was round 2 - the MMR shot in his arm. More screams. More black hemangioma and threatening looks. But more mama milk soon calmed him down enough that the incident was, mostly, forgotten.

There might have been a 3rd immunization, but since Elliot thoughtfully brought home chicken pox from daycare when Felix was 7 months old, there was no need for that vaccination. We would have delayed it until school age, anyway. Which is what we did with Elliot, and the rest is history!

Tuesday afternoon, Elliot had such a wicked melt down, I went next door and asked if they could take Felix for 20 minutes or so while I calmed down the banshee.

That night at supper, I turned around to see Elliot's finger buried up to a knuckle in his nose. I asked him first if he needed a tissue, but there was something about his behaviour that made me ask what was up there. He giggled and said "Macaroni." Stinker. I could only just see it when I tilted his head and flared out his nostril. I couldn't get him to blow it out, so I called the brand new Nurse Link line that they just set up here last week and they confirmed we had tried everything we could at home and we should take him to the IWK.

Back over to our neighbour's I went - she graciously drove Jay & Elliot there and even left her daughter's car seat so they could cab home if she wasn't able to come back for them! At the hospital, after looking at it, they decided to try one more thing: Jay had to lay Elliot down, cover the non-noodled nostril and blow hard into Elliot's mouth. He had to do it about 5 times (and there was much talk at that point about having to freeze his nose and extract it, since it didn't appear to be working) but then the noodle came down far enough that they were able to sit Elliot up again and get him to blow really hard a few times and it shot out. Lucky duck. Extraction wouldn't have been fun. But I half wish they had done the extraction, if only to teach him a lesson. (Bad mama!) I think he knows the seriousness of the situation now, but it would be even harder to forget about it is they when the freezing & such route.

When they came home Elliot ran up to me and said, very solemnly, "That wasn't a good idea."

This morning, Wednesday, Felix has a fever. It's only 100.5 (in his ear), but he's rather cranky. Probably just a reaction to the immunizations, but I really hope it's not the start of strep throat. The dr said to minimize the boys' contact, and to not let them share food/cups/utensils. Yeah right. Easypeasy.

I've spent the last 3 nights bed hopping and medicating the boys. *YAWN* I told Jay this morning that he should feel free to come home from work early! And where are my boys now, you might be wondering? Parked in front of the TV while I sip my coffee and cruise the internet. I won't be winning any awards today. We always said that our kids wouldn't watch much, if any, TV. And when that started to change, we vowed that the TV wouldn't become a babysitter. Things never work out the way you plan. I console myself with the knowledge that we screen their shows and they have a short list of programs we deem to be a good mix of education/entertaining.

Ahhhh. And then mama gets time to pee alone. Cook supper. Surf the internet. Put one child down for a nap so the other doesn't go batshitinsanedestructive... you know, the basics!