Sunday night fever

And Monday night fever. Tamsin's not well - she's got what Bill had all last week, with what I guess must be laryngitis (not much of a voice and very croaky) and a bad cough. And a bit of a high temperature, especially at night. Poor thing was quite delirious last night for a while. Of course, as soon as she gets up in the morning, she's fairly bright and lively, and won't do me the favour of languishing on the sofa all day, like other people's ill children do, to let me recover from the disturbed night. Anyway, she's learning about normal body temperature and the immune system fighting off infections as we go!

So, Monday was quite good. We started off the morning with 'track', of course - a pretty much daily occurrence for at least the past year. We also had another game of Pairs, and some skittles, and then Linda, my hairdresser, came to the house to give us a trim. It was her first time back since having her baby Louisa, who was born 3 weeks before Isabelle. We were supposed to be due about 2 months apart, but then I was 2 weeks early, and she was over 2 weeks late and ended up with an emergency caesarean. Anyway, Louisa and Isabelle sat and looked at each other and played with the toys and grabbed them from each other and cooed and were generally extremely cute! Tamsin, however, refused to let the scissors anywhere near her hair and generally threw a complete strop, but I guess I'll let her off on the grounds of being rather under par. But please excuse any resemblance to a scarecrow next week at Kessingland!

Then Isabelle needed a nap and the dog needed a walk, so I got Isabelle into the buggy and we all walked into town where I picked up a few things to eat, and met several people to stand and chat with :-)

Home again, and we sat in the shade of our lilac tree and had some lunch, and then Tamsin complained of being tired and cold (!), so she curled up on the bean-bag and watched some TV. At about 3pm I asked her if she would like to go and see Henry the Harris Hawk, with whom she appeared on the front page of our local newspaper a few weeks ago after he had visited playschool. She said yes, so we set off up to the Falconry centre. We arrived in time for a demonstration, so we saw a falcon being flown, and then we asked if we could see Henry, so the man got Henry out to fly. He did several low-flying manoeuvres very close to our heads, which freaked Tamsin out a bit and she started to say she wanted to go home, and she didn't want to hold him :-( Never mind - I'd forgotten my camera anyway! We looked around a little, but Tamsin was really a bit scared of the birds, even though they were in cages, so we left, not really having had £7.50's worth! We wandered up to the nearby Batsford Garden Centre, where I used to work before I had Tamsin, and said hi to some ex-colleagues. Isabelle coughed a lot and consequently did a major puke while I was sitting in the office talking to my ex-boss! We had a brief wander round the garden centre where I got a small stone trough and some low-growing plants to make a permanent pot for Benjamin's grave, to take up there on Wednesday. We've had some spring bulbs in the plot, and also occasionally go up and put fresh flowers, but most of the time it's just been bare grass by the headstone, and that doesn't feel right. I'll feel better knowing there's a permanent flowery indication that he is not forgotten.

After getting home and a quick salad tea, I bathed Isabelle but Tamsin refused. I at last got round to changing the sheets that had been on the bed all last week while Bill was ill. Tamsin and Isabelle fell asleep quickly, and I lay there for a while, relaxing and dozing. 45 minutes later, Tamsin woke up confused and feverish, and vomited on the clean bed :-( I was just about to get the Calpol and dose her up when she just conked out again and slept fitfully for the rest of the night in our bed.