Doctor, doctor

Well this weekend Tareka and I celebrated our 5th wedding anniversary, and a total of just under 9 years together. As he is working tonight (the 10th) we arranged to go out on the Friday for the day, leaving the girls with their Nana and Poppa.

We had a great day out, ate lunch where we felt like it without checking for highchairs or child-friendly food items, watched a film in a real cinema (rather than a DVD on the computer after the kids are asleep), came home to give the girls a goodnight kiss then back out again for a fantastic dinner out at a new Indian & Thai restaurant (a strange combination, but it worked beautifully).

The girls slept well (we all stayed over) apart from a 3am wake up by Mapera having done poos. This is very unusual for her, but I know she will have been holding onto it. She's not very good at going anywhere but at home at the moment. Fortunately, Mapera sleeps in Nana and Poppas room when we stay over, so darling Nana dealt with it.

I was planning a morning lie in, but the baby needed feeding and Tareka needed to sleep in as he's on nights, so I got up. I don't think I slept well as I woke up tired, sore and grumpy. All bad ingredients when it comes to tired toddlers and demanding, teething babies.
I got home in the new van, planning to have a bit of a sit down, then do some tidying while the girls had their afternoon sleep. I was then going to work after they went to bed and then have an early night myself in preparation for an early wake up on Sunday.

This Sunday is Mother's Day over here, but I was to be spending the day with one child staying at a friend's house while I attended a committee meeting 3 hours drive away. More about that another time. I didn't mind, I'd known about the meeting for months, and Tareka was working. Besides we'd just had a lovely day off for our anniversary.

Now, last Monday, Mapera cut her foot at Puna Reo Playgroup and I'd been trying to keep it clean and covered ever since, but since I live in a land where people go baref0ot all year round this had been proving difficult. I thought the cut had been healing until I took Mapera's plaster off tonight and was confronted with an evil looking, weeping blister-like sore, along with an ominous red line radiating from the wound across the bottom of her foot.

This caused me to do 2 things. The first thought was of a children's book I had read where a character had an infected thumb and the red lines started running up his arm, and his children were told that if the line reached his heart he would die. I even remember what the book was called "Emil and his clever pig". Strange the things we remember in times of stress.
Secondly I made a lot of phone calls - Tareka to tell him I was going to the emergency doctor and wasn't going anywhere tomorrow, the doctor to get the man to the clinic asap and the father-in-law to tell him to send my apologies to the committee (he's going too).

I packed the two kids into the new van (I am now eternally grateful for my husband's need to get this new van bought immediately) and raced down to the doctors. He reassured me in his delightfully calm and Dutch manner that the red lines were nothing to worry about, and even told me to look up lymphangitis on the internet to reassure myself further. He also gave me a course of antibiotics for Mapera there and then (no going to the all night pharmacy in the next town YAY!). So I bundled them both back into the car (amid much tantrumming from Mapera who wanted to "go and see the doctor" "you've just seen him darling" "no I haven't" "yes you have now sit down in your car seat before I count to 3" ARGH) and went home again.

I started trying to tidy up and get back to normal, so I popped the nappy bucket under the hot tap to fill ready for the nappies from today, then phoned Tareka and the Father-in-law to update them, then started looking up lymphangitis on the internet.

About 4o minutes later the baby woke up so I went to her room to check up and OH NO! I'd left the tap running into the nappy bucket and the water was now cold and brown. I had emptied the hot water cylinder completely.

So. Now I am here, having tried to clean up while listening to a soothing Radio 4 play and failing. I am overwhelmed by tiredness; the amount of cleaning and tidying I need to do just to get the house to "normal" standard; the work I haven't done; and the underlying feeling of terror that my child will get very sick in the night and I might not hear her...

...and when people ask me if I work, I say no.