Phew... it had been a pretty action packed start to the year: house-painting, library tours, book-reading, swim lessons, soccer camp, visitors, birthday parties, cycling events, trips... so I thought with school starting we'd begin to regain some rhythm or routine to our weeks. Oh that was coming, but first, a couple weeks of more wackiness.
Somehow between our drive home from New Plymouth on Sunday and school starting on Wednesday, Helena developed a serious rash on her legs and arms. There was no way a few itchy spots were going to keep her from the first day of school, so we went to see the doctor after school. Interestingly, he'd diagnosed her with 'school sores' but he called it impetigo and gave her anti-biotics and gave me very little information. When she came home after school on Thursday she was in tears... her itchy spots had multiplied and become itchier! And by Friday she was home-bound for the next week...
This was one of the most uncomfortable experiences of our lives as she was so miserably itchy and sore and frustrated and... and it all just took soooooo long to care for her 300+ open sores each night. Although Tony did come up with some very effective ways of caring for her patchy skin, which included a lot of Dettol, antiseptic creams and lots and lots and lots of first aid stuff.
One of the benefits of being home was that we had a bit of flexibility around time. On Wednesday 10 February we picked up Tony from work, got some delicious dumplings from a shop on Cuba St, then popped over to Specsavers to pick up Helena's new glasses!!! This was a lot more fun than just going after school ourselves... throw daddy and a restaurant into the mix and it's always going to be a favourite for this girl.
The bright side of having Helena home from school was of course being home together. We had some really lovely moments reading, writing, practicing maths, playing games and spelling - she is good company. Plus she got lots of movie time while I worked on the house.
By Thursday, we went to the beach to enjoy the stunning weather we'd been having...
someone had mentioned salt water may be good for her skin, so she was all too eager to get in the water for a bit of splashing. After a week of feeling miserable, it made my heart glad to see this girl smiling and laughing in the water.
During this period of anti-biotics and open sores we did pretty much stay home, but by the end of it we ventured out a little bit. In order to cover up the mummy factor, though, she did get to wear a couple of her cutest dresses in interesting combinations...
So finally after two weeks of skin irritation, ten days of anti-biotics, five days off school, two jugs of Dettol, more laundry than I want to remember and heaps of social cancellations, this girl started back to school in earnest on 15 February with a HUGE smile on her face. Which only got bigger over the next few days as her front teeth finally dropped out!
Good times, indeed!
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