Housebound

If you ignore the horribly contagious disease, today has been a great day! B has chickenpox, so him and I stayed at home from nursery and work and spent all day together. Not sure when was the last time I had the chance to spend all day with only one of my boys. 

We had so much fun I almost feel guilty, as I should have been at work. Although obviously he couldn’t have gone to nursery so…

We said goodbye to T and daddy and dived straight into the Duplo box. The box is so big, B can actually fit in it! We built a train, a tunnel, a red train station, a yellow train station and even a green one. We took many passengers on and off. Then poo happened! 

We went for a bath, a long one with fish, penguins, squids, turtles and not one but 4 boats… all for B. No sharing! He was over the moon!

After a quick visit to the doctor, lunch and a nap we went back to a little bit more playing. We made a wristband! We coloured it, cut it and then… put it on a giraffe’s neck. Why not! 

It gets dark very early now, but that’s not a problem if you have light tubes to play with! Look at the smile on this little boy’s face… priceless!

By 5 PM we were ready to slow things down, so B picked up the Ratatouille DVD. He had never saw it before, but he likes “topi”, so he thought it was a good choice… I agreed! 

We didn’t have time to watch it all, but we really enjoyed the first bit and I stop myself from explaining the difference between topi and ratti. I didn’t want to spoil the fun, you see. We definitely have to watch this again and maybe, just maybe, invite T as well. 

At 5.15 grandad arrived. He’s taking over babysitting duties tomorrow so I can go back to work… my day home alone with B was over.

Nanna

“Nanna” means sleep in Italian and it’s the boys favorite word. They don’t like sleeping at night, but they love to “play nanna”. They pretend to sleep and then jump up to surprise you. They close their eyes and snore. They are proper little actors! 

They can play this game anywhere. Obviously in their beds, but also on the couch or in the car and lately even at the dinner table. They just love it. 
Level 2 of the game is forcing you to sleep and then jump on you or scream to wake you up. In my house,  “mamma nanna” doesn’t mean “I’m tired and I want to go to bed”. It means “mummy close your eyes and pretend to sleep”… so I can awake you up by screaming in your ears!

The best part is when they play together and they both shut their eyes really tight, make a loud snoring noise and then jump up super smiley and start to giggle! 

I know this is not the most exciting post you have read so far, but I am writing this blog so that they boys could read it when they are older and wouldn’t want them to miss out on this lovely happy memory, would I?

The unexpected babysitter

As T had chicken pox this week, we had to come up with a plan to keep him out of nursery but not to miss too many working days. In a desperate moment of madness, I suggested my 25 year old brother-in-law, Kieran. Why madness? Well, before this week he had no experience of children or toddlers. He had never even changed a nappy and my plan was to leave him with a sick grumpy toddler. As I said, madness.

He was perfect! The weakness on his babysitting CV was his strength. Because he had no experience of toddlers, he listened to every word I said. We had a schedule, which he followed to the letter; a simple menu, which worked well; and a quick nappy masterclass to prepare him for the inevitable. T didn’t even poo on the first day. What a welcoming child! 

Kieran is not really interesting in jobs in childcare, but I would give him a great reference. He spent 4 solid days playing with trains. Only trains! But he never complained. He made T dance, eat, sleep, play and draw. He made sure he had lunch at the right time and a clean nappy before afternoon nap. In 4 days he only made one mistakes: broke a babybel in half (T went nuts!).

When it was time to say goodbye on Friday night, T said “bye bye” then pointing at Kieran he added “Kieran mine”. I couldn’t have chosen a better baby sitter for the week. I thought chicken pox was going to be a nightmare but I was wrong, someone up there has a masterplan for me and my boys and He always surprise us.

The return of chicken pox

I thought we had ticked the box. I believed we crossed the river never to come back. I thought we had been to battle and come back victorious… but I was wrong. Chicken pox is back and it is taking no prisoners!

Last year both boys had chicken pox. We had one falling ill with it and, as by medical school textbook, the other followed exactly 15 days later. We were lucky it wasn’t too itchy. We didn’t have any major scaring and the main problem was the waking up at night for the cough (apparently a very usual symptom, who knew?!). If you read this blog though, you know we are used to waking up during the night. With or without out highly infectious diseases!

As everybody knows, being a virus, you build an immune system to chicken pox so you can’t get it again. Or at least I thought so… in extremely rare cases, only on a leap year, if you live at a certain latitude and altitude and on a new moon night, your child may get it again!?! Actually there’s a more scientific explanation for it, but I’m not interested. I know it’s all been organised to annoy me and no one is going to change my mind about it!

Now let’s see if B gets it AGAIN as well… keep reading!