Alexander adventures

Alexander has been experiencing a recurrent fever the past little while. He's usually fine during the day, but by the time we put him to bed he'll be running a temperature. Not always. Just often. 

We put him to bed with a fever last night. He woke up still feeling feverish this morning. Evidently he knew that something was amiss because he texted me to ask me to bring him some breakfast upstairs. Now food is usually verboten upstairs...unless you happen to be quarantining in your room. There has been a lot of eating in unusual places over the course of the summer as various people have been isolating for various reasons. 

Anyway, I didn't respond to his text messages right away because I was still in bed with Phoebe, but when I did grab my phone to look at it the first few messages were from Benjamin's phone and I immediately became concerned.

I took a screen shot and sent it to Andrew (who was long-since up and working downstairs; he's got that 7 am thing going on) and asked him to verify whether Benjamin was, like, even in the house?! He has been known to sleep walk and I was just a little concerned at the nonsensical nature of this text. Why was he talking about lunch? Back out to his house? What is he even talking about?

Evidently Andrew found the texts (or my panic over the texts) concerning as well because he rushed upstairs to check on Benjamin, who was still asleep (obviously we don't live by the mantra "early to bed, early to rise"). Alexander, however, was busy texting away on his phone, so Andrew invited him to come on downstairs for breakfast.

The issue, Alexander explained, was that his phone had died, so while it was charging he used Benjamin's phone to text me. And then when his phone had enough of a charge to come back to life he used his phone to text me:

mom can u Breg mi Brecvst uP strs

pls

"Mom, can you bring me breakfast upstairs, please?"

His phone doesn't have predictive text enabled so he had to work hard to type all of that out (and sound it out) by himself. Benjamin's phone does have predictive texting enabled, so that's why we had the mess of: "the water was good but it just came off and I had to get some food for lunch so I'm going back in time to go back."

Alexander was still trying to communicate that he really wanted breakfast—"really just trying not to get some food out of the water"—but was a little too eager to press the predictive text button.

Anyway, he got some breakfast in his tummy. And is acting like he feels just fine. But is running a low grade fever.

*****

On Tuesday when our kitchen was all torn apart and we had no water or cooking appliances or countertops, Alexander got into the dried apricots.

I'm not sure how many he ate before I caught him. Evidently several. 

I had just put Phoebe down for a nap and was coming downstairs to fix some lunch for him. 

"Can I have some of these [dried apricots] with my lunch?" he asked. 

"Sure," I said. "But not too many or they'll make you sick. Ask Grandpa."

That's a running joke in our house. Grandpa has no self-control when it comes to (1) cherries or (2) dried apricots. And this can sometimes...run...into issues (pun intended). 

Anyway, Alexander had evidently eaten a bunch of apricots while I was putting Phoebe down for a nap. And then I let him have a few with his sandwich. And then I caught him munching out of the bag again.

So I told him "no more," sealed up the bag, and put it up even higher in the pantry than before. 

Those leather-like apricots sat in his stomach like a rock all afternoon. 

I sent the kids outside to play and was getting ready to take Phoebe out as well when Zoë and Benjamin ran back inside, yelling, "Alexander threw up!!"

"Where?" I asked.

"In the garage!"

I handed Phoebe to Rachel and rushed out to the garage, where I found Alexander kneeling down, a little puddle of regurgitated apricots between his knees. 

"I tried and tried to gulp it down!" he said. "But I couldn't."

"How do you feel?" I asked, putting my hand on his forehead to check for a fever.

"Fine now!" he said. "I will go play!"

And he ran off to play in the yard while I set about to rinse his vomit off the garage floor.

"Alex!" I heard Zoë yell. "Gross, Mom! Alex threw up again!"

He'd retched right in the grass. And then again. 

Andrew was just pulling up around this time and as Alexander made his way down the driveway he paused to throw up two more times, making a grand total of five throw-ups outside (which I'm grateful for), all of which looked like straight apricots. 

We went inside for dinner, setting Alexander up on the couch with an empty bowl for him to fill, rather than inviting him to the table where he would have been filling his stomach. 

He threw up two more times...still just apricots. 

And that was the end of that. He apparently just needed to get the apricots out of his belly. He went to bed just fine and had no issues at all...until he came down with this fever a couple of days later.

*****

I meant to post this yesterday (August 11), but I'm glad I didn't because I have one more story to add! 

Alexander is still feverish. He mostly feels fine; he's just feverish and tired. 

Everyone else is healthy so I took them to the pool today and we left Alexander home to watch Bluey (which he just is starting to enjoy; he used to think it was scary—the first episode is about a magic xylophone that freezes people and for some reason that was just too much for him) and playing Minecraft (where he is making a Bluey world, complete with characters that he's built; it's pretty impressive).

After swimming, the kids got ready to have a movie night at Grandpa's house. Rachel had made pizza dough, which they took over there to make homemade pizza in Grandpa's oven (since we don't have a working oven) and watched Holes. 

Alexander stayed home and ate a quesadilla and watched Bluey and played Minecraft and read stories with Mom. Poor kid.

Anyway, we've been pumping him full of fluids today so his fever can keep burning without dehydrating him too much (we're also giving him fever-reducing medicine, but fluids are probably just as important as that). All those fluids mean that sometimes he urgently needs to use the toilet...

So, just before dinner Andrew told him to go use the potty and wash his hands, so off he went. 

Andrew and I were in the music room, watching Phoebe crawl around (since Alexander is mostly self-sufficient in the bathroom these days) when we heard a crash and a scream.

I said mostly self-sufficient...

We ran to the bathroom and found Alexander with blood streaming out of his nose, screaming like no tomorrow. 

"What happened?!" we asked. "Did you trip? Did you faint? Did you fall off the toilet? Did you..."

All of our questions were for naught. He was so distraught he could hardly get a word out (for all the screaming he was doing). Andrew went to work staunching his nose and calming him down and once the blood had subsided and Alexander was breathing more than crying, he told us what happened.

He had finished going potty and had hopped down off the toilet just fine. But then, when he was trying to pull up his pants, he couldn't do it! So he kept yanking and yanking and...it turns out he was standing on his underwear and he yanked so hard he knocked himself off balance and crashed face first into the tub. 

Which reminds me that I need to go throw the bath mat into the washing machine...it's covered in blood...