Sebastien at TWO

Happy Birthday to our little boy! Now a true toddler he's more running than falling over - except now when he does fall over it's with more force and therefore there's more blood (or a bigger bruise).His Council of Friends might be smaller than Alex's, but we don't include all the many cars, trucks and trains that he loves to death. We started out the day with "regular" breakfast - a bowl of milky oats and banana that is bigger than either his sister's or his Daddy's - this is his best meal of the day.

Then, he enjoyed pancakes for second breakfast (well, the chocolate chips anyway - Alex enjoyed the rest). Alex deigned to read him a Thomas the Tankengine story before leaving for school.He opened a couple of his presents before it was time for Alex and Daddy to go to school - of which I only have video and no still photos. Alex found it very difficult to restrain herself from opening them for him - now that he's two he doesn't really need help. She was also upset that she wasn't allowed to play with the presents herself.
Pretty soon it was just Sebastien and Mummy playing at home.

We found out that there had perhaps been a mitigating factor to Alex's tantrum meltdown in the morning (something I don't have a video of) as Daddy got a phone call from school saying Alex had woken up from the after-lunch nap with a temperature so please come and get her (thanks H1N1 guidelines). Brett had a seminar and dinner that night so Mummy and Sebastien dashed over in a taxi and picked up a miserable Alex. This was at 3.30pm when school finishes at 4.30pm.

Poor Alex had a temperature had a temperature of 100.1F/38.4C so it was doses of ibuprofen for her which she outright refused several times and had to be coerced to take. By 10.45pm her temperature at the end of the medication cycle was 102.7F/39.3C. Not a good night's sleep for her or Mummy either. The next morning she woke with a 99F/37.2C temperature which rose to 104F/40C by lunchtime and it was time to go to see a doctor. We were lucky to have a chinese friend take us to the Zhongshan Hospital where we lined up to pay in advance for our doctor appointment (they're advanced here with an electronic ticket number system for waiting) then joined the multitude in the hall looking in on the current consultation.

I must admit to a western distaste for this complete lack of privacy and tend to stand a little way away from the consultation room in an effort to conserve my sense of privacy. Oftentimes there will be several patients standing in the room whilst a consultation is going on. Once we saw the doctor, we were sent to have Alex have a bloodtest to confirm bacterial or viral infection - so more queueing to prepay for the test then queueing to have the test (Alex was exceptionally unhappy to have this test - a prick in the finger that was milked - and screamed and struggled. Pretty embarrassing.) For any sort of injection or blood test you do not receive a bandaid after. Instead you have this small stick with cottonwool wrapped around one end to hold until the blood clots. The floor of the bloodtest area was strewn with used ones - not a nice place to hang out and wait for the results. I was glad to not have Sebastien there to worry about.

So the bloodtest showed bacterial infection for which Alex was prescribed an antibiotic and some sort of chinese powder medication that you dissolve in water and drink. Well the antibiotic was ok (we had to cut the tablets to give the right dosage - though I still think that a three day course is short) but the first time Alex had the other medicine she vomited it right back up. So Mummy decided that the antibiotic (plus keeping her hydrated and her fever below 39C/100.4F would be enough and ditched the other. Alex had managed to contain her vomit to the bathmat and would continue to ask for the next week why it was she managed to keep it only on the mat.

Alex had the rest of the week off from school (4 days - there was a Saturday school day in there thanks to the PRC birthday holiday the following week) and spent her time lying on the floor in front of the tv drifting in and out of sleep. Sebastien couldn't understand why his sister was at home and not playing with him and Mummy spent her time removing him from her vicinity. She recovered in time to go to Sebastien's birthday party - of course.