Wednesday 21 October 2009

Renewed and ill.

Yes, I know bit of an oxymoron of a title there.  Renewed because the period of the dark moon is over and I'm feeling more energetic and enthusiastic, however, I am brewing a cold too.  It started last week, but as I was house cleaning I just thought it was all the dust that had sneaked under my furniture, just waiting for me to come near with a sweeping brush, to have me in fits of sneezes.  I began to get an inkling that perhaps germs had invaded when piriton and a steamy bath refused to lodge the stuffiness and bung the incessant dripping. 
The nose went back to semi normalacy a couple of days ago, and here I was thinking it was done and dusted - if you'll pardon the pun.
Last night at about 11:30pm I began to realise that I was very warm, toasty warm in fact; yep running a temperature, considering the chilll in the air, not necessarily a bad thing, but still as a single parent becoming ill is problematic.  Downstairs I trundled and swallowed 2000mg of Vit C and 2 echinea, (you know what I mean), pills and dragged my aching body back to bed... only for Rye to come in.  Took him back to his room, settled him down again and thankfully sank into my own bed.
Disaster!  Rye woke me up at 3:15am, he'd flooded his nappy, so I peeled his wet nappy and pjs off, quick swipe with the flannel and then just scooped him up into my bed and back to sleep...... oh, no wait, I now couldn't sleep.  With a not inordinate amount of peevishness, I got out of bed and went downstairs and for some bizarre reasons decided to tidy the lounge and sweep the floor.  I was sat drinking a hot chocolate and wondering whether to attempt bed when Rye bounced down the stairs.

Another 200mg of Vit C and another echinea pill and the realisation I felt relatively human; back of my throat is scratchy and it feels like a deadweight is sat on my chest, still, suprisingly spry.  Nonetheless, windy, wet and cold days just beg for snuggled under duvets and I decided to be lax mama and pop cbeebies on.  Bless my lad though, he watched about half an hour and then got out of bed and went into his room and played with his jigsaw puzzles.  Naturally, I took advantage and snoozled until a cold little nose poked through the small "airhole" in the duvet to nudge mine, and a piping little voice said, "Get up mummy,".

Downstairs we clumped, Rye dressed in thick warm joggers, jumper and socks.  Breakfast was fried green tomatoes, (I used crushed cornflakes instead of breadcrumbs and I was very impressed indeed), and fried bread with a tad too much ketchup - oops.  Then down to business; when I got up earlier at stupid o'clock, I had also cut Rye a nice clean sheet of paper and freshly sharpened his pencils.  So we sat together and drew pictures, coloured in pictures, wrote numbers, letters, practised pre-writing skills like making spirals and coils.


Rye decided it was time for some vehicular action with lots of "Oh no, crashed",  it occured to me at this point I could introduce Rye to the concepts of big and small, many and less.  He already has some idea of course, but the the different sized wooden cars and trucks seemed to present a perfect opportunity and be more applicable than the workbook I picked up ages ago.   All I did was ask Rye if he could find me a bigger lorry, or a smaller car etc.  This he was pretty happy to do, however he quickly clicked I was trying to teach when it came to the groupings.  I seperated his pencils into two groups and asked him which group had the most pencils in them.  I swear, that boy rolled his eyes at me and then proceeded to mix all the pencils up.. and I think just to tease me, he grabbed the group with the most pencils first. 

Then he wanted to wear my mum's scarf as a dress - well I tied it so it was like a sarrong and he rolled his cars up and down the laminate, until I intervened because there was some sort of insect; looked a bit like an earwig except it was black.  Rye was running his cars at it, so I quickly scooped it on some paper and popped it outside before he managed to kill it, with a simple explanation that the cars going over it would hurt it.


After that we went back to playing on the table, and I dug out Rye's farm animal jigsaws.  Rye is not generally one for jigsaw puzzles; he tends to get very frustrated if it won't fit how he thinks it should.  My tolerance for frustrated whinging isnt that high so for sanity sake I'd put them away.  Anyway, much to my delight and pride Rye easily did the puzzles and had great fun trying to then put the wrong pieces together and saying to me, "That doesn't fit with that, naaaaaahhhhh," and shaking his head and laughing.  My heart warmed at his simple pleasure of showing me that he knew they didn't fit together, but he just wanted to tease me - it was good to feel connected as a parent again.

While there was yet more vehicular action, I ambled into the kitchen and knocked up some shortcrust pastry in the magimix and a parsley coating sauce on the hob.  Pastry is resting in the fridge until nearer teatime, and the coasting sauce is bathing leftover chicken and veggies, which is my pie filling.  This chicken has provided us with 3 tasty meals.  The roasted dinner on Monday, cold chicken and veggies with roast potatoes yesterday and tonight chicken pie.  I still have the bones too so chuck them in the slow cooker later and make a chicken and veggie soup.  Not bad for a £4 freerange chicken.  The boy has me laughing too, he's never shown that much interest in meat and poultry before - but this chicken he's been smacking his lips and saying "mmmm, sooo nice", he seems to understand that he's eating a chicken too because he said to me "Chicken mummy, nice, (stuffing chicken breast into his mouth),Bawk, Bawk, Bawk", I confess I nearly choked on my yorkshire pud at that comment.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Well, it sounds like you've managed to have a lovely day despite feeling poorly and hats off to you for being bothered to cook a pie from scratch!! Rye sounds like a funny little fella! I especially like where you say he rolled his eyes at you when he worked out that you were trying to teach him!

Wyld Jane.. said...

goodness rye looks so big ! i agree i wouldnt do a pie from scratch whilst ill xx