The Good Patient

Ah yes of course, the kids have been back at school for 3 weeks which is plenty of time for the swapping of viruses etc. Dimitri was off school Monday and Tuesday, with a bit of a cold, nothing dramatic. 
Although I still live with fear and loathing of colds and illnesses - I'm mentally scarred I guess.  Until around 6 or 7yrs Dimitri seemed to have a cold or  something or other at least once a month. Plus  fevers always came on suddenly with "chills", other wise known as shaking-like-crazy, blotchy skin and blue lips, these things aren't so uncommon but it still scared the crap out of me. It's probably because fevers are also accompanied by a lowering of "seizure threshold", so both myoclonic seizures and myoclonic jerks would return for the duration of the illness. Over the years the frequency and effect of colds etc has lessened - it does get better. So I'm more relaxed. But not completely.


Anyway, I diverse, Dimitri was a good patient this week. He became mighty attached to the fluffy blue blanket, attempts to remove it only increased his grip on the darn thing, and suggestion of getting up to go anywhere where met with a swift move to pull the blanket up over his head. Giggling could be heard from underneath. A lot. "Dimitri, where are you?" - giggle. "have you seen Dimitri?" - double plus giggle ". "Who's feet are these?" - double giggle plus raucous laughter.  


We did get out to the supermarket to replenish supplies of milk, macaroni and chocolate croissants. You can't live without the basics. I have to say these expeditions were much less fraught than they have been of late. The only real problem was the checkout, Dimitri had picked up a Barney colouring book, okay I thought, choose your battles - he can have a book today. At the checkout however he didn't want to hand it over for the bar code, not an uncommon problem... After a bit of wrangling the book was "beeped" through and I commented to the cashier that we were still struggling with the checkout, she replied a long the lines"he'll get it eventually". This is the same cashier who during the summer had commented that a lot of my anxiety was possibly from worrying about other peoples reactions (to our somewhat dramatic escapades). "Don't worry about what other people think" she said. 


Today I woke Dimitri up at 5.45am to get ready for school, he stomped into the kitchen, flicked the lid of the bread bin open to check for croissants, no luck, stomped out again. Dimitri doesn't always speak in the mornings. I know - he's non-verbal. But even so he can say so much without words, today it was obvious he was not in the mood for speaking. After he turned his nose up at the Quaker porridge oats, I decided it was more important for Dimitri to have something in his stomach before leaving for school and retrieved two croissants I had stowed away (in a saucepan in a cupboard) yesterday which cheered him up a bit...


Today when Dimitri gets home I'm pretty the first thing he will do is - check all the saucepans for croissants.