The joys of kiddie illness

We've just come out of the other side of 10 days of ill children (fingers crossed!) and I thought I should share our experiences for others struggling with poorly children and the challenges of virtual house arrest - you are not alone! I should say upfront that I'm not very good with illness - I am rarely ill which probably means I am not very sympathetic as a parent until it becomes apparent that things are really bad.

A came down with it first - it started fairly well for me as I got to potter round at home while he slept for 2.5 hours and Mark took the bigger two swimming. I never feel I make the most of his long naps as they are a bit unexpected but I can't remember the last time I managed to do some knitting during the day! We had a couple of broken nights, the first of which was quite companionable as he and I curled up in the spare bed together. I am a bit more sympathetic towards A on nights like that as I know it won't be long before he is happy with his own bed all the time. The older two have slept better in their own beds since they were very small and, now they are getting bigger, sometimes I wish they had a bit more need for me! The second night with A was less pleasant - after we had an hour or two of him thrashing around and repeatedly hitting me I dumped him back in his cot and we all managed to get a bit more sleep.

The nights weren't too bad, especially as it was the weekend so no need to get out the door the next morning, but the days were hard going. I know that A is a naturally happy chappy but I hadn't realised just how little he normally cries until he spent what felt like the whole weekend crying. His temperature was jumping up and down and he obviously wasn't very happy with the world - no amount of cuddles made it better.

A couple of days later and W comes down with something as well. He didn't have a temperature but was exhausted - he managed to fall asleep on the 2 minute drive back from school - and has a horrible cough. He's always been susceptible to bad coughs and this winter is proving to be no exception.

W and A being ill is definitely a challenging combination, especially when the weather has been so rubbish. W doesn't want to go anywhere (and to be fair, looked like he was on death's door when I dragged them to Hobbycraft one day for craft supplies), A is really hard to distract when he is under the weather and stuck at home, and T still needs exercising otherwise he drives everyone potty! My mum came to stay at the weekend and provided some relief - she must have spent a good couple of hours reading books to W which kept him happy.

We have done a lot of craft over the last week in an effort to keep everyone entertained. Against my usual rules, we cracked out the Christmas craft ideas before December started as I feel a bit uninspired in the gap between autumn/Halloween craft and Christmas. I finally went for it and bought a couple of sets of cheap wool from Aldi which the boys have been enjoying - we have made some pom pom Christmas trees which look really good and they've also enjoyed wrapping pretty much anything they can get their hands on in wool.

Touch wood, I think we are coming out the other side of it. A is back to his usual cheery self, W is back at school today after a week off and the worst of the bugs seem to have passed T by. Having struggled through the last week trying to keep everyone happy, with the bigger two back at school and nursery today I have found myself feeling decidedly grumpy and missing them - there's no pleasing some people!