No muffins

I made two batches of muffins in two days: gingerbread muffins for a playdate on Friday, and banana-and-butterscotch muffins on Sunday because we needed to use up some icky bananas. However, I'm not going to blog them because I wouldn't want you to think that all I do is make muffins. And I didn't take any photos. And they're all gone.

My children are mostly delightfully robust. They don't get sick often, for which I am thankful. I can deal with snotty noses, but my patience for vomit is limited, and I was quite pleased last week when Monkey waited till we were actually in the ER to throw up, because then cleaning it up was somebody else's problem. However, this does mean that whenever they're struck by a fever (or a temperature, as we say at home, which is pretty meaningless when you think about it), I tend to get a little doom-and-gloom about it.

Yesterday afternoon we needed to get out of the house, but I knew that a trip to a mall would send adult stress levels through the roof before we even started the car, so I suggested putting them in wellies and raincoats and going for a walk in the wet. This worked pretty well, I thought: we all wandered down the road, the kids right in the rushing gutters, finding big sticks and pushing wet leaves around with them. After a while B and I were getting a bit too rained-on, so we all meandered back up the road and home. I put Mabel straight in the bath to warm her up, since she was wet up to her tummy, despite the boots. But it wasn't very cold, and we weren't out very long. I thought it was okay.

Later on, when she seemed warm and looked flushed, I wondered if our encounter with nature had been such a good idea. She conked out early, practically as soon as I put the book down, but her breathing was more rapid than usual. Such a thing causes a mother's thoughts to turn lightly to pneumonia, so I came downstairs and WebMD-ed it. I think, having broken the invisible barrier and gone to the ER once, I feel as if nothing is stopping us from going again, maybe on a weekly basis, now that we know how it works. Nothing except my fervent desire to stay at home and have healthy children, that is. I decided that Mabel would be okay till the morning, so long as I could keep an eye on her. And knowing that she'd wake up pretty soon looking for her bed-mate (hint: that's me), I felt I'd be in a good position to do that for most of the night. I don't know why I feel that nothing terrible can possibly happen if I'm right there beside her, since I'm asleep too, but I do.

An hour and a half later, right on schedule, she woke up. She'd been warm of forehead going to bed, but now she was downright feverish all over, looking miserable, and complaining of a pain in her tummy into the bargain. I thought of appendicitis, as you do. (My father nearly died of peritonitis when he was five. I know things have probably changed in medicine since 1934, but family lore weighs heavy.) I took her temperature and it was 101.5, so I gave her some Motrin, and half an hour later she was asleep, cooler and breathing easy.

The rest of the night was exactly as usual, and this morning Mabel was her regular chirpy self, with the added bonus of having discovered how to whistle. I just wish she'd discover how to blow her nose. And it would be nice if tonight brought no surprises, because I'm over surprises.