Dog hair and diarrhoea
Well, school holidays are a laugh a minute, aren’t they? Especially when it’s raining. And even more so when ALL THREE KIDS ARE SICK. Yep, we’ve gone for the trifecta these school holidays, and the cracks are beginning to show.
It all started when I offered to dog sit last week. Now, some might say that the mother of a child with a dog allergy perhaps shouldn’t offer to dog sit. But I … well … I forgot. I forgot! And then I remembered, but figured he’d have probably grown out of it, and anyway it was a short-haired dog, so what’s the worse that could happen? Eh? Oh that’s right, he could end up in hospital. Yep. Ben spent Friday night in A&E because he couldn’t breathe. Mother of the year, right here.
To the dog’s credit, she was LOVELY, and we ended up keeping her and sending Ben to my parent’s for a couple of nights, which was a pretty fair swap if you ask me.
Before this, on the rainiest day of them all, I took all three (Ben gasping and wheezing, like that kid from Malcolm in the Middle) to a bouncy castle place that’s just opened. I realised we’d made a terrible, terrible mistake when the first person I saw was a man with a tattooed head. Now, my mother didn’t teach me much, but “never trust a man with a tattooed head” was definitely one of her golden rules. So yeah, there was a man with a tattooed head. And a cash-only policy, with the ATM being one of those ridiculous machines that charges $23 per transaction and spits the money out with venom and ridicule. You know the ones. And I knew, instinctively, that this wasn’t the place for us. It was split into three age zones, which is great in theory, but in practice meant that massive great teenagers were bounding through the littlies section and knocking them over and forcing me to become my dad, giving them THE GLARE and telling them to watch themselves, or else, and drawing my finger across my throat. So we left, sharpish.
So you’re getting the picture, yeah? Ben: gasping for breath and coughing over-enthusiastically. (And god, I’m sorry, but over-enthusiastic coughing to me is like fingernails down the blackboard to others. I TOTALLY GET the whole struggling-to-breathe thing, but must he make such a song and dance about it? Must he?) The dog: lovely, but allergy inducing. The rain: relentless. Me: halfway to losing it. And then Frankie gets croup. YES, doctor-who-told-me-it-wasn’t-the-season-for-croup, CROUP. And I’m all, like, just give me the fucking steroids, doc, and he’s, like, no, croup season is a good month away, and I’m, well, I’m all: “Okay, thank you, sorry for bothering you,” because I’m British and I have no balls. So, as a result of my absence of balls, we’ve had three solid nights of Frankie barking like a seal. In our bed. Lying horizontally and kicking like an epileptic starfish/seal.
Okay, so you’re getting this? Dog and rain and allergic reactions and school holidays and croup? Because it gets better! It really does! Because then Alice gets the shits! The shits! At first I think she’s just done a really explosive poo, so I change her, and think we’re safe to leave her nappy off for a few minutes while I sort out the shrapnel from the poo explosion. Cue every mother in the land snorting with laughter, because as every good mum knows, we’re NEVER SAFE. So yeah, Alice came and sat on my lap. And shat on me. And while I was cleaning that mess up she went and shat on the sofa. I spent the morning on my hands and knees sniffing the poo trail, and disinfecting as I went. It was great fun! And now somehow her diarrhoea has turned into a spectacular cold, with green snot just to liven things up and drip into her mouth when we’re trying to take a family photo.
But HEY, things are on the up. Ben’s back to normal (his version of normal, anyway) and in “brilliant big brother mode”, which is ace, while it lasts. The sun’s shining, and Alice appears to have stopped shitting herself. The best part? It’s Friday, and Paul’s home, and wine time is but a mouse-click away. Happy weekend, y’all!