LOOK OUT, HE'S GOING TO BLOW!

Morning all. Hope everyone had a good holiday weekend – whatever you chose to celebrate or worship, or simply dip in chocolate and stuff in your face. Our Easter week(end) was spent in a les than orthodox fashion; in blunt terms, the King had a stomach virus for five days and I spent all five of those days, doing laundry, wiping up sick and trying to avoid being puked on (MF, you may want to skip this blog). I was not always successful at this task, as any mother will tell you it’s bound to happen to you at some point.

This (e.g. kid illnesses) is the part of motherhood you always hear about, but you never quite realize how all encompassing it is. As most of you know, I live in a climate that (after this winter) I liken to the tundra. The winters are long, cold and you spend about six months wrapped up like a Gortex stuffed mummy. It’s not a good look or a good feeling when the rest of the world (or so you tell yourself) is spending Easter day in flip-flops and you’re battling frostbite. Fine, I’m being somewhat dramatic, but even the King has decided that going outside right now is a tad tedious not to mention painful. So, with this cold comes illness (although they claim cold is supposed to kill certain bacteria. Yeah, whatever). I’m not joking when I say that the King has had a runny nose since November. It may have stopped for a day or two here or there, but then as sure as I’m standing here, his nose is running and I find myself watching the King wipe his nose on his hand, my trousers, or his stuffed animals etc. [For some reason he finds it incredibly amusing to not ask me for a tissue].

The other thing that winter brings is stomach bugs that become stuff of legends around the neighborhood. You literally hear people talking about it at the playground as if the plague has swept through London and is knocking down toddlers and adults in its path. And of course, with the stories, the virus gets larger and more horrific with each telling. ‘My friend’s child had it and she was vomiting for 3 weeks and her head spun around on her neck!’ Great, good times, can’t wait to have that on my doorstep. Luckily we were not hit with much of this until recently, and after surviving the last week, I’m thinking the stories had more truth than fiction to them.

Luckily when the King has a stomach virus he has vomiting ‘tells,’ as I like to call them. After the first unexpected surprise (shall we call it) on the kitchen floor, I realized that each time it was coming, he would ask me to cuddle, then give me that look of ‘I’m not sure I’m going to like this next part;’ then emit a small whine, and whammo, out it would come! So I spent the last week, watching him and listening very closely and when he’d say ‘cuddle,’ I’d go tearing across the house like a maniac and put him on non-carpeted floor whilst trying to stay two feet away from him. For the most part this worked well enough and although he still wanted to cuddle mid-emission, I was able to avoid most of it.

Then I got cocky of course. As soon as he was feeling somewhat better (you can never tell with toddlers as in one moment they are throwing up and the next my son is asking for dinner and wanting to dance) I took him to nursery as I was needing a well-earned break (and had 80 loads of laundry to do). Of course as soon as we walked in the door, I realized he had fallen asleep in the pram on the way. Not a good sign with a toddler that rebels against sleep. Upon waking, he looked at me, wanted a cuddle and…well, you know the rest. There is nothing that is going to get you more looks than riding a bus with a coat covered in kid vomit; well, aside from the looks you get when your child proceeds to lose his lunch on a crowded tube train as my son did the next day. (In my defense, again, he looked on the mend, so we figured we were ‘safe’). This is one of those instances that truly gives one an insight into human nature. As I was utterly horrified and moved across the train at Mach four to try and get him on his own, I also couldn’t help but notice other people’s reactions to what was taking place. Some people looked at me in horror as if I should’ve come equipped with a miniature toilet (I am considering this for the next time around), others just put their noses deeper into their books, and then there were two very brave and sympathetic souls who approached me with a little bag of Kleenex. They are clearly parents, or just very selfless individuals.

Needless to say, I finally realized we were truly in the clear when he woke up the other morning, looked at me and said ‘PASTA, Mamma!’ The eating hasn’t stopped since, the kid is carbo loading like he's about to do Ironman (the race, not the film). And what’s better, the sun is actually shining (hallelujah!) like an omen out of the ‘virus is gone’ handbook....although I have to admit that even now when the King asks for a cuddle, I do contemplate putting on my raincoat.