3 months! This must be the longest break that I've taken from blogging. And yes, the photos have been piling up and there's this nagging little thought at the back of my mind that I've not been blogging and I'm missing out on archiving my children's childhood memories.
So what have we been up to? The kids have been rather sickly in Sept and Oct. Caleb's been having a bad case of Rhinitis and allergy attack and he's been having bouts of rashes around his eyes. I haven't quite figure out what exactly that he's allergic to but for now, the prime suspect is dairy products. The poor boy absolutely loves his cheese and hotdog buns and cakes and milk but somehow, it seems that they either cause him to have a very bad case of stuck phelgm in his throat or give him rashes when he consumes them. I've never really had this problem with him until the last couple of months and it has been very trying for both of us, trying to change his diet and make sure that he gets enough calcium and all.
And in Oct, Caleb came down with another round of HFMD. Yup, the all time HFMD which persistently haunts our family. This time round it was really bad. It appeared as hot, red, itchy rashes all over his body. When I first brought him to the doc, we were told that it looked like an allergy attack. It didn't look like the typical HFMD coz the blisters are usually contained around the hands, feet and mouth. He did have 1 ulcer in his mouth then but it really looked more like a bad case of allergy. I felt really quite challenged then coz he hadn't taken any dairy products and I really didn't have any clue what was causing the rash breakout. On top of that, his Rhinitis problem was escalating so I had a very unhappy boy at home, complaining and whinning of itch all over his body, pain in his nose and difficulty in breathing. To top it all, it really didn't help that my neighbour next door was renovating his house and we were "suffering" big time from all the dust and noise for a whole month.
Caleb's rashes did subside after a week, and then, Sarah started displaying the same kind of itchy, red rash all over her body. That's when I realised that this no longer looks like an allergy but something contagious. A trip to the ped confirmed that even though the rashes don't look like the typical HFMD ones, it was still very likely HFMD. I asked the ped why there's rashes all over the children's belly and back and was told that it was possible that the body's reacting to the virus. So, for a 2nd week, we were once again stuck at home, putting up with highly irritable kids, dust and noise.
With the reno going on, we had to keep our door closed all the time and I think with the poor ventilation and the dust, it was inevitable that viruses get passed around the house and so, by the 3rd week, I saw that Sophia too had caught HFMD. So it was another week of "detention" at home. Thankfully, Sophia had an extremely mild case of it and didn't really complain as much as the two older ones.
Well, despite the children being down with HFMD and us being cooped up at home, I'm still thankful that what Caleb has is HFMD and not an unknown allergy attack. I'm also thankful that Sophia recovered just in time for our family to go on our much needed family holiday. (Will blog more about that soon.)
For the last two weeks, ND and Caleb started their school holidays. This is ND's first real holiday since he started school. He's usually busy with attachment or internship during his school holidays so it's been really nice for us to have him around. It's also Caleb's first school holidays. The previous school that he goes to is a childcare center and they do not close for the hols. But now that he's in a kindy, they follow the normal school holiday schedule. So we have been busy, busy, busy. Actually if you ask me, what exactly have we been busy with, I can't really say. Other than going away for our short family trip, the days seem to be just flying by. But we are enjoying the family time together and I guess, that's what matters most.
