Building her immunity

So, we clocked up another cold last week. This means that I have a cold this week, but at least I know how it will progress from watching Alice's sniffles. This one doesn't seem too bad - if I follow her lead, I will have a blocked up nose for about ten days, a cough for just two and will be completely off my food for three or four, with a propensity to blow any food that is put into my mouth across the kitchen in a giant raspberry. I might lose a couple of kilos, which would be nice.

We went to a Mothers Group festive lunch yesterday, which was very pleasant. All the babies had a different cold and one had even purportedly just got over chicken pox. She had only had three spots and her mother was sure that they were mosquito bites, but the Clinic were insistent that babies present with very mild symptoms. Anyway, it was very reassuring to hear that all the other babies were being extremely annoying with their food during periods of blocked up noses and that most of the Mums were suffering greater sleep deprivation. Mothers Groups are great places to discover that you are not alone in the dark places. Unfortunately they also bring you crashing down to earth, when you think that your child is surely a musical/literary/sporting genius, since you can guarantee that Little Tarquin will be crawling just as well if not better than your own little Angel and that all babies like books and balls (especially if they have bells inside).

We were all very relaxed about the sharing of germs (apart from the chicken pox, but no one was very convinced about that one, including the mother of said patient) and are pretty confident that come January, they will all be catching all kinds of undesirable infections from daycare, if they haven't already started. Last week, Alice apparently transmitted an infection with a nasty fever to Stu without having any symptoms of her own to show for it. He was laid up for 3 days (and I was forced to apologise for accusing him of a hangover for the first day).

Fortunately if she should catch things, we have a procession of grandparents coming to stay who will hopefully like looking after sick girl. And perhaps even Alice too.