Foiled again

Today was a trying day. Getting everyone out the door this morning was horrendous. Michael did not make matters easier by pouring water all over himself and then, once snug and dry again, getting sick. We decided, callously, because that’s the kind of parents we are, that it was only a little vomit and his cough made him do it. So Mr. Waffle whisked him and his brother to the creche while the Princess and I made our excuses for lateness to Madame Valerie.

I worked from home this morning and finished up at lunch time contemplating two hours of freedom until I had to collect the Princess. That was when Mr. Waffle rang saying that the creche had rung him saying poor Michael was sick. Mr. Waffle was going to collect Michael and bring him home. In the reduced time available, I cast aside all other tasks to write an amazingly witty and entertaining post on the comic relief apprentice show. Please don’t ask, I can’t bear it. Just as I was putting the final touches to my magnum opus my husband and sick son came in the door. The former had to hot foot it back to the office so he left me holding the latter, a wan sad little boy who promptly threw up on his mother and continued to do so at 10 minute intervals for the next hour and a half. During this period, Mr. Gates had been biding his time and, seeing that I was otherwise occupied, he automatically shut down my computer and restarted it with updates uploaded. Something he had wanted me to do all morning but which, to my subsequent regret, I had resisted. Oh, and also, the lovely German Gin tells me that she cannot read this site or comment on it. Anyone else having difficulty? Gah.

I found some old motilium (note for the childless with strong stomachs – anti nausea medicine) in the medicine cupboard. Its expiry date was April 2007 and it said keep refrigerated. I rang my parents for guidance and my father said crossly that they were at a funeral (Irish people almost always are*) but he relented when he heard why I’d called and said that they should be fine and the only reason it said “keep cool” was that suppositories (oh yes) can lose their shape otherwise.

So deftly, I changed Michael and inserted a suppository before he even had time to complain. He is my third child you know, I ooze competence. He wasn’t sick for two hours which allowed me to collect the Princess with relative ease though poor little fellow, he was slumped in the buggy looking green and he was clearly thinking “this would never have happened, if I were her first child”.

At 6.30 Mr. Waffle and Daniel came home and poor Michael was very down. It was, alas, abundantly clear that Mr. Waffle and I were going to have to abandon our planned dinner together. Poor Mr. Waffle, his birthday is on Monday and this was by way of advance celebration. Also poor Mr. Waffle because he always buys me wonderful presents for my birthday on March 10 and then, a week or so later, he gets another pair of socks, some cufflinks and a tie. So, here I am facing into a night of frantic sheet stripping instead of dining in one of Belgium’s many Michelin starred restaurants. It’s enough to make anyone want to be a parent, I’m sure.

*Irish people go to all sorts of funerals other people wouldn’t bother with, friends’ parents and grandparents, distant relatives, you name it. My husband always says that this was one of the problems the Guildford four, or maybe the Birmingham six, had. Apparently, they were all going to the funeral of an old school friend they hadn’t seen in years and the English jury just couldn’t believe that this was true. Why would you go to the funeral of a person you hadn’t seen in years? Irish people are odd this way. I read an interview with the Irish state pathologist (who is Scottish) and she said in amazement “Irish people don’t think it’s a good week unless they’ve been to a funeral”. My father is still bitter about the holiday in West Cork when it rained every day for three weeks except one and on that one day we were all at the funeral of a second cousin of my maternal grandmother’s.