Illness and injury

Why is it that having kids is such a constant worry? There always seems to be one of them to worry about!! Last week Millie fell over in the bedroom (she was playing a chasing game with Georgia) She banged her head on Abbie’s wooden footstool. She got a nice little ‘egg’ on the side of her head, so we put some ice on it and kept an eye on her. The next day she seemed fine and went off to school. At about 3pm I had a call from the school to say that Millie had been sick. (Poor little Mil, when I got to the school, she was sat there, on her own, in the medical room, clutching a little bag of sick on her lap, with a bit of sick on her jumper, looking all worried and poorly). When I got her home I phoned NHS direct for advice, as, even though there was a sick bug going round her school, I was concerned that her sickness may be linked to the bang to the head. They advised that I should take her to A&E to get her checked out and so began our hospital trip! Rob came home to take over with the other three, while Millie & I set on our way, her with bucket on lap! Having stopped twice on the way to sort out the sick, we finally made it. We got in and checked in, I heard the lady tell the person in front that the waiting time was over an hour and we settled in for the wait. Five minutes later we were called through, a child being sick after a head injury is obviously high priority! They thoroughly checked her over and kept up in for a few hours under observation. As she had stopped being sick and she had no other symptoms, they decided about 9pm that we could go home, but I was to take her straight back if anything changed. We made it home, she was sick once more, but I think the motion of the car didn’t help. We put her to bed, and breathed a sigh of relief......however that was relatively short lived, as she woke at 12.15 am screaming in agony and clutching her head saying that it hurt. No amount of comfort would calm her down, so in a mild state of panic, we got our neighbour out of bed to sit with the others, gave her some Calpol and bundled her into the car to take her back to the hospital. It was an awful journey; Millie was sobbing with pain and holding her head saying “Make it stop Mummy!” By the time we got there, the Calpol had kicked in and she had calmed down. So they checked her over again and sent us back home...phew! In answer to those of you who think that our visits to the hospital are a bit too frequent, just remember, there are four of them!!! That was Millie’s first trip to the hospital and she is over five years old, so that’s not too bad is it? Admittedly, we have also had to take Georgia (broken arm) and Hannah (cut above her eye) within the last year, but those trips were actually in a different county, so surely that doesn’t count does it?

Now Georgia is poorly with a high temperature and Millie has been poorly with a bad throat and high temperature, it just seems that just as one gets over something, the next one gets it! So we’ve just been through a couple of those nights where they all wake up, one after the other, and just as you get one settled back into their own bed and are just managing to drop back to sleep yourself, the next little feet can be heard padding into your bedroom.....and so it goes on! Here’s hoping that all are back to full health very soon xx

Hair-cut creations!

So on Sunday afternoon Abbie decides to try her hand at a bit of hairdressing. It was prompted by Georgia saying that her hair was getting in her eyes and something about PC Plum (on CBeebies) going to the hairdressers! (thanx CBebbies – you don’t know what trouble you’ve caused!!) I didn’t see the finished results (or indeed realise that it was even going on upstairs!) until Abbie came down with her hair about five inches shorter than it had been! Actually, that’s not strictly true, the front bits, that she could reach, were shorter, but the back was still the same length! Apparently, she didn’t even take the bobble out of Georgia’s hair for her turn, she just held the pony-tail out and cut the end of it off, which makes for quite an interesting style when you come to take the bobble out. Hannah ended up with an incredibly short fringe, apart from the long bit in the middle of course! It looked a bit like Kevin Keegan in the eighties, with her long curls down the back, and shorter on top. Millie, not to be outdone, decided to go for a bit of hair hacking too. Some parts of hers now are about a centimetre long, but in other places it’s still as long as it was! A very interesting look! I then discover that the ‘hairdressing salon’ was actually in the spare room, so on the floor there was a carpet of hair and on the sofa there were piles of hair stuck to the throw! Great! I’ve vacuumed as much as I can, but I am still going to be coming across hair for weeks! I kept very calm about the whole thing! They did look funny! I just kept reminding myself that there are worse things happening in the world than a bit of hacked hair – it’ll grow back. When I was telling people what had happened it turns out that most people have got a hair cutting incident to share, either themselves as children (usually the night before the school photo!) or their kids! So it would seem that a bit of self-styling is part of the growing up process! Last night I took then all to a hairdresser and got her to salvage what she could out of the situation! At least its winter and they can all wear hats!! Of course, if I was going to share my own hair-cut incident from my childhood...it would have to be the time I got chewing gum stuck in my hair and had to have it all cut out!!.... I seem to remember being banned from having gum after that......!!