I am NOT an owl

Toddler boy is suffering from a sore throat and cough. The cough is really annoying as it stops him getting to sleep. Obviously it is very annoying for toddler boy [although he protests even when his eyelids are closed tight that he is “NOT tired”], but it is also slightly annoying for his parents. I was lying in his rather short bed trying to get him to sleep the other night for what seemed like hours, thinking of all the things I had left to do. In the immediate future there was daughter two and three’s homework.

Daughter three has a list of spellings to do every night. She basically gets them all right first time. Daughter two has never really got to grips with the whole concept of spelling. It is far, far too boring.

Suddenly, toddler boy started reeling off the months of the year followed by what sounded like the numbers 1 to 10 in French. I asked him to repeat. “Un, deux, trois” he said as if he were singing Away in a manger. I was momentarily thrown from my efforts at getting him to sleep. “Say something in Japanese,” I asked. Too late. The French effort had finished him off and he had fallen asleep. Two hours later he was awake again, coughing away. He then proceeded to cough and scratch half the night [he has eczema too].

By 4am, I was thinking his breathing sounded bad, although he wasn’t hot. I asked him how he was. “I need orange juice, mummy,” he said. I got the orange juice. He tried to go to sleep. Ten minutes later, I poked my partner. “I think his breathing is bad. Can you listen?” I said. My partner, who had had to get up at 6am the previous morning for work and was not at all happy about the coughing situation, muttered something about the asthma pump and went back to sleep. I got the asthma pump toddler boy was given the last time he had a cold and we decamped to the sofa. “Not Peppa Pig,” he said on spotting the tv. He must be ill, I thought. He cuddled up.

Five minutes later his head bobbed up. “I am NOT an owl,” he said. The ramblings of a deliriously ill toddler or some tortured toddler dream? I decided it was the latter since he has variously informed me that he is not a monster or a lion in the past. We fell asleep eventually, only to be awoken by daughter two in a panic that she would be late for choir [she would ideally like to be there six hours early]. I got up and made the packed lunches. The night seemed a bit of a dream. Or maybe the morning bit was the dream. It’s hard to tell.

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• Mum On The Run