But there's more.... on Friday, Caleb started developing a sore throat, runny nose, cough and high fever. Not good news at all for us since Sarah was not cleared of HFMD yet then! So we had 2 different viruses going round in the house, 3 young kids, a cranky Mummy who has been cooped up in the house and a highly stressed Daddy. And now, we have even more reason to need to keep each and every kid apart from each other. So Caleb got the living room, Sarah got our bedroom and Sophia got confined in our other bedroom. Even when we slept, we had to stagger the kids. Sarah slept with ND on one end of the room, Caleb slept in the middle of the room and I slept with Sophia on the other end of our room. This separate and quarantine biz is really no joke! And I haven't even mentioned the number of times that I needed to bath and change clothes and wash my hands coz Sophia's the only one who's virus free so I needed to make sure I'm really germfree when I nurse her.
We got by till Sunday, the day that we were going to declare Sarah HFMD free, but then when evening came, we realised that she was running a fever and having a runny nose. I was running a fever and having a sore throat and runny nose myself. So now, we have more casualties at home. ND wasn't spared himself. Although he doesn't have any fever, he had a sore throat for a few days and a runny nose till now. So now, we're a very sickly familee (who's gradually one the road to recovery).
The one good thing that we got out of this is that Caleb learned to be slightly more independent during thess few days of confinement. We've always had great difficulty getting Caleb to play by himself coz he's such a social creature. I've tried many times to teach him to have some alone time where I tell him that he can do anything he wants at home, like read a book, do some puzzles or play on his own at home but I'll always find him just sitting at the sofa staring blankly. When I give him any of these suggestions, he'll tell me it's boring and he doesn't like to do it alone. I've kinda been troubled by it at times coz I think that this is a life skill that he needs to learn. Other than being able to play and work in a group setting, he needs to know how to do stuff on his own and motivate himself as well. His preferred choice when there's nobody to entertain him, is to watch TV. Since last year, he has been increasingly drawn to the TV and keeps asking to watch TV. I really don't want him to grow up needing the TV or computer as his constant companion so I limit his TV intake to 1hr a day at the most.
On Monday morning, I suggested to him to take out his Lego and Megablocks to build some structures and I was pleasantly surprised that it actually lasted him the entire day. He spent his whole morning building up a little city, took a break during lunch and after his afternoon nap, he continued improving on his city. Of course he needed some encouragement and suggestions along the way. We'll check on him from time to time and give him some positive reactions and suggestions on how to build a nicer city to motivate him. And he didn't even think of asking for any TV to watch! Thank God for the creation of Lego and Megablocks!
Caleb's little city
And here's Caleb's little introduction on his city. Btw, when Sarah saw his city, she asked us why korkor's building Tampines??!!
