Obsessivemom

After six days of illness.. Hrit is off to school today. Cough, cold then high fever, then ear infection and finally an upset stomach courtesy the antibiotics … that’s the way things go with Hrit each time. What’s worse between bouts of fever he is completely well. The challenge is to occupy him without tiring him out and that is a true challenge for an up and about child like him. The options are limited…..Reading, playing board games, crafting or watching television. Over the last few days we exhausted pretty much each of them.

He read and I read. From Dora to Dinosaurs.. we did them all. He watched hours of Doremon and Ninja Hatori till my ears protested. And we did craft. But that’s another post. So bored was Hrit that the other day I found him at our ninth floor balcony addressing an imaginary gathering in chaste Hindi. He said in a booming voice, “Aap sab log dhyan se suniye. Kal raat ek bahut bara bhoot aane wala hai. Main use maroonga. Aur koi ghar se bahar nahin aayega. Jo ayega mara jayega.”

Friends, Romans, Countrymen….

Yes well kids are allowed to do strange things when they’re unwell.

With all our attention focused on Hrit, Naisha’s been feeling left out. She fussed around Hrit alright.. getting him water, fetching his medicine, putting his dinner plate in the sink. She’s been a good good girl. However she made sure I ran all her errands for her. I had put away her dinner plate, help her get dressed and when she went down to play I had to follow with her bottle of water — a kind of ‘I”m not relinquishing claim to mum just because you’re ill’ thing.

I did the best I could … relaxing the rules for her each morning.. the toughest time of the day for her, going to school alone. So the glass of milk was smaller, the daily egg relegated to alternate days and she was given a ride to the washroom each morning… sigh! I wish I had some way of reassuring her that I loved her just as much as Hrit. And I’m so very glad she’s spared the frequent viruses that seem to stalk him all the while.