Consumption

I am wondering if I will get to sleep in my own bed, accompanied only by my husband tonight. It'll be a first for quite a while.
Before you start getting carried away with wild ideas about mad parties, swingers and other such stuff I should explain that we've all been ill, and repeatedly so. Andy started it by getting a cold with a nasty cough, the kind of cough that goes on and on, like the shipping forecast but less pleasant.The problem with the cough, at least from my perspective, was that when he tried to suppress the cough it got worse. So, as I'm trying to relax and sleep I keep getting disturbed by a man alternately coughing or shaking trying not to cough. He decided that for all our sakes, the sofa bed in the lounge was a better idea. This meant that I could sleep relatively well, but Andy kept getting woken up by the cat, either trying to get in or out of a shut door or wanting food. Cats, they're actually more annoying than toddlers and not many things can manage that.
Then it was my turn. A sore throat, a runny nose and yes, a chesty cough. It's been more than a week and a half and I still regularly erupt in noises that sound more like a dog trying speak than a  cough, but there you go. I spent almost a week on the sofa bed and Kim the Cat made my life relatively easy the first two nights (slap a big bowl of food down at 9.30pm) and Night Nurse did the rest. Alas the third night she cuddled up behind me and I was startled from my almost somnolence by a hot feeling down my back. The wretched moggy had emptied her bladder on me, my blankets and the bed. Have I said before that I harbour passive-aggressive feelings towards our pathetic excuse for a feline? They weren't so passive after that.
Still feeling very ill and quite groggy from the little pot of green goo I had downed, I called Andy and we did our best to remedy the situation. I ended up in a sleeping bag that was more comfortable than the blankets, but my pajamas needed a wash.
Thanks, I think, to my chemical assistance I have made enough of a recovery to resume my normal sleeping position, but Joseph is ill now and he has a nasty cough. Andy had him the first night and I did the second, the poor little chap just did not like sleeping in his cot. He'd only sleep in our bed, propped up on pillows. When I was looking after him I did put him back in his cot after he went to sleep, but he woke up minutes later and howled.
I know I shouldn't let him sleep in our bed. We should be strict and we usually are, but when he's ill what can you do? I think it's better to at least manage to get some sleep even if you are regularly woken up by a little pair of feet digging you in the ribs because he's moved round in the night and is now sleeping perpendicular to the recommended position.
He's asleep now in his cot and I hope he will stay that way, but it will probably last only as long as the last dose of calpol. Until then, peace reigns - but she is nervous and knows she will most likely be deposed any minute.

Watching Joseph

He takes the wooden puzzle pieces from their cardboard box and transfers them one at a time to the body of his toy Noahs ark. It's not a very good ark, the sides have animal shaped holes in them. This would make it nice and easy for the animals to enter two by two, or even up to six by six. It would also most likely mean that they leave just as quickly through the other side and I doubt it would be any good at keeping rain or sea water at bay.
When the puzzle pieces are all in the ark he takes them out one by one and puts them back in the cardboard box.
They don't stay there, soon they are back in the ark. To make things a little more interesting the small cardboard box is now moved from next to the ark to next to me as I sit drinking a much needed cup of coffee and writing this blog. Ah caffeine, the parents friend. The puzzle pieces are now ferried across the room, one at a time until the box is full. When this happens the whole box is picked up and the pieces poured en mass back into the ark. A change from the previous pattern, but it does make a good noise. The box is returned to where I am sitting and the slow transfer process begins again.
Now they're on the sofa and he's picking them up and looking at them. The box is discarded as is the ark. I don't believe it, he's actually trying to do the puzzle.
No... wait, he's not. He's seeing if he can poke them between the sofa cushions. Whoever gets to use the sofa bed next had better check to make sure their slumber isn't interrupted by the hard wooden edge of a piece of wooden puzzle.
Actually, the ark is back in play now. He's ignoring the main body of the boat and just concentrating on its detachable deck with rather improbable house section. Many of the pieces will fit into that bit, although not all of them.
It gets me wondering, you know, the things we show and tell our children. Noah, when building a suitable structure to save all those animals from a watery apocalypse would probably not have built a comedy boat with a little house on the deck. I spent many years thinking that the Jewish Tabernacle had black and white chevrons up and down the roof due to a verse stating that it was made of "badger skins", which is a mistranslation but I still can't get the image from my mind. I wonder what little things will stick in Josephs mind. How many of those funny ideas you get as a child - based purely on somewhat inaccurate information that an adult has given either because they don't know the real answer or they think the child wont really understand - will Joseph have?
It's cups now, stacking cups. They have numbers on and Joseph thinks they're all four, five or sick - we think he means six. He's not too interested in stacking them, just rolling them along the floor and along my computer table. There are puzzle pieces all over the place but he does not care. I'll end up treading on one and screaming in a comedy fashion, no doubt.
Cups and blocks scatter the room, thus demonstrating how a toddler is the biggest generator of entropy. This room was in an ordered state whilst he was having his not-quite nap upstairs. Now it is chaos. Upstairs was chaos when I went to get him, now he is gone from it I have returned it to its ordered state and it will remain so until he is upstairs again.
And can anyone explain why it is that when I go to tidy up the toys he has discarded he gets upset and wants to play with them again? I suspect some psychology is involved, but I think I need more coffee to deal with it.