Tuesday, July 21

My little ray of sunshine

This picture just sums up my little ray of sunshine and bundle of mischief.

Yesterday I was really worried about her. She had a really bad headache, I mean, REALLY bad. She could barely move for it. I gave her calpol but it didn't really take it away. She ended up falling asleep at about 12.30 but woke up 10 minutes later and threw up quite a lot. She then slept for 2 hours. This is not like her at all. She's not had a nap in the day for a long time. Later in the afternoon she threw up again. Of course, swine flu is at the forefront of everyone's mind at the moment, but she didn't have a temperature or a cough. Her neck wasn't hurting and no rash, so meningitis wasn't such a worry, plus she's had her vaccinations for it, but even so, I kept a very close eye on her. She did improve by early evening and was really chirpy and back to herself. I thought it was just a 12 hour bug. She woke about 10.30pm screaming and crying that she could hear things and it hurt her ears. She's always had very sensitive ears and loud noises seem to hurt them. She couldn't explain the sounds. It wasn't ringing or hissing or humming, but she had her hands planted firmly over her ears trying to escape the noise. It lasted about 5 minutes each time. She was also sweating like mad and was very hot. Cold flannels cooled her down and calpol settled her back off to sleep. She woke twice more with these episodes but eventually slept until this morning. This morning she is right as rain as if nothing ever happened. We talked about her ears and what she could hear, with me making suggestions. We managed to hit on what happened. She said everything just got very loud. She could hear the TV even though it was very quiet and she said it sounded like mummy and daddy were shouting very loud when we were only talking normal volume. I don't know if this is all down to her having a temperature or what, but it seems that even the silence was deafening. She insists this morning that everything is (in her words) 'much much much right again'. So I have no idea what was wrong.

So this morning, in the tipping it down rain, we had to go and get some shopping. There was nothing in the house yesterday for dinner etc, but she was so poorly that I couldn't get to the supermarket. Thank god for takeaways.. which we don't do very often these days.

Isabelle had some birthday money left to spend, so off we went to a local retail park. I needed to call at the pet store to get yet more flea spray, even though I've not seen a flea for days and I've sprayed, powdered and vaccuumed every single day since Thursday.. apparently Mark found hundreds this morning. God only knows where, because I've gone around spraying everywhere and haven't seen one! But that's by the bye.

Isabelle and I went into the toy shop and she had a field day. She had £25 left to spend. Her little face was a picture as we were going around and she asked if she could have 'this' and I said yes, and then she asked if she could have 'that' and I said yes. She was nearly bursting with happiness. She is such a girly little girl. She bought a big teapot with a full tea-set inside including a little cake that velcro's together, an ironing board and iron (funny how little girls love these but as women we hate them!), a little shopping trolley with loads of cardboard food boxes, some (more!) princess glass slippers and a little silk purse set and a colouring book. We went to the checkout and she was grinning saying 'I'm so lucky I have got so many things'. She even has change! It all came to just over £15. She still has money to spend LOL. All hail to half price sales!

So, I have had un-countable imaginary cups of tea, about 20 slices of velcro together cake and have had to be checkout operator for her shopping trips with a trolley full of cardboard food boxes while she's all glammed up in her glass slippers and silky handbag purse. She's now sat colouring but is so happy.

Her enthusiasm is a pleasure and is very heartwarming. After all this crap that's gone on this past week, all it takes it for me to sit down and watch her play and become completely engrossed in whatever she is doing. She has such a great imagination you can't help but be sucked in and go with it. It is lovely to be able to go into her world and escape mine. Bugger the housework and worries of life, lets all sit down and have a pretend cup of tea and a piece of velcro birthday cake!