Bah, coughing up my lungs, humbug.
Nope, I love Christmas, I love the choosing of the gifts. I love the carols. I bloody love the binge watch of cooking shows, not to mention the epic showing off my cooking skills on the day.
The thing I don’t like, as the title suggests, is pretty much absent from the child rearing Handbooks, is one fact only.
The fact, my friends, that the second you have a child, the second they get outdoors, and no matter how well you wrap them up warm, they will fall prey to every single germ, microbe and illness known in the universe.
Not to mention, as a result, that whilst they are calpoled up to ear holes, sat on the sofa watching all the shite you endure on a weekend with no hope of catching any of your own shows, you, of course, will inevitably end up with the same bug.
Only, Calpol and it’s magic properties are useless to us. Give my daughter Calpol, and she’s fine to sing in her room. If I try it after running out of Nurofen, not only does it taste so sugary even Willy Wonka would have banned it, but it does jack for my ills.
No, if we catch, as I have done this week, one of my Brats illnesses, I can guarantee that long after the two of them are well again, I am still ill, still unable to breathe through my nose, and still feeling like any minute someone is going to come put a red cross on my door.
The issue is with our house that Littlest gets chest infections very easily. You just have to think of a virus round him and he gets it. So, I spend a perpetual cycle of the year with his unwell, me catching it, him getting better, me finally getting better too, and then him getting another virus.
That’s why, last week, when the Year 3 teacher said that the whole of Littlest’s class was made up predominantly of a mass of coughing children, I knew that soon, the plague would be among us again.
Although I say us, what I mean is Littlest gets a virus, I get a virus from looking after him, Mini then (fakes) a virus and Elder still wanders around, healthy and basked in the glow of the not virused up.
The bastard.
(He says it’s cos he’s old skool and thus he “doesn’t allow that shit” and the house would very much collapse around us and be without food and milk if he did get ill).
Suffice to say, on Friday afternoon, I was doing my PTA bit by helping set up the Christmas Fair, and then making craft Reindeer Food for the children to spread in their gardens, and Littlest came in with Elder after 3.15, crying within two minutes. His lovely teacher mentioned from her stall of sweeties that he had not been his usual happy self.
I knew, I knew straight away that he was going to be ill by Sunday, and yep, he was.
You can tell when he will be- he snores like a 70 year old drunk who smokes 50 a day. One day, if I’m feeling mean or he has been particularly evil I may record the sound.
No school for him then.
Next was Mini, who went in to school, and then came the phone call asking us to pick her up.
With Mini, I am skeptical, as she misses her bro when he’s not at school, not to mention she likes bunking off to watch Nick Toons all day and get hugs. But, actually, she was very, very pale when she trotted in, the type of pale she usually gets when she has travel sickness and her lips go almost see through and zombie like.
2 down, me to go.
And, yep, this morning, I ache. My chest is atrocious, my ears are hurting and my nose is like a tap one side and blocked the other.
Not helpful as I have PTA meetings, Parent sales, and Christmas shopping to finalise. Mini is now desperately wanting to be better as she’s doing a big concert with her school choir for the Mayor on Sunday and she doesn’t want to miss it or the practice on Friday afternoon.
I think its time to buy some industrial strength Vic Vapour Rub and Nurofen, some lemons and honey and to walk round in my slippers, partly cold and shivering, partly boiling hot.
Kids, just another way they, ahem, enrich our everyday lives.
(By building our immune systems).
The Lazy Girl's Guide to Life 