chicken pox
We survived the chicken pox. Raspberry came down with it last Wednesday and spent four days in quarantine, which meant that I was mostly stuck inside too, save for a few jaunts out for groceries, new library books, a giant roll of drawing paper and a friend's house. We chose not to have her vaccinated for the chicken pox at 15 months, agreeing that if she didn't get it by pre-pubescence, then she'd get the vaccine. I'd kinda thought that her chances of getting it were relatively slim, but then Lucas had gotten shingles about two weeks earlier and we assume that's how Raspberry caught the chicken pox.
The morning I discovered two blisters on her -- one on her neck and one on her back -- I got a little overly excited in the way someone does when they discover their kid has an infectious disease. I think that sort of freaked Raspberry out a little, because she immediately declared she was ill (complete with the whiny voice) and took to bed with a bucket, as she had puked the last time she was sick. It made me realize that I probably should've been more calm. Ha.
The first two days of the quarantine were peachy. There was lots of reading (primarily the Ramona Quimby books), a couple of Youtube videos and lots of playing in her cardboard house. She wasn't incredibly itchy and wasn't really covered completely in spots either. I sponged her down with a baking soda solution twice when she said she was very itchy. She really didn't like it, even though it seemed to alleviate the itch. Just to be on the safe side, we gave her mittens and she put them up when she felt the itch. She slept with them too, but they kept getting lost among the sheets. Early on, I had a night of fitful sleep (actually, so did Raspberry) because I kept drifting in and out of consciousness, making sleepy half-hearted attempts to look for the mittens as I was afraid of her scratching.
I could tell she was getting a bit restless by the third day, even though we had April, William and Aruna over and she'd been excited about them coming. That evening, I sent her out to the rocks outside our building so she could run and jump and climb. And run and jump and climb she did, she was so thrilled to be outside. Our fourth day in was marred with lots of general mopiness and a couple of tantrums. I went to April's house for a birthday get-together in the afternoon, leaving Lucas to put up with Raspberry's swinging moods. When I returned home to a very grumpy, post-tantrum child, I decided that we really had to get her outside -- not just into the parking lot -- the next day. Thankfully, most of her spots had begun to crust over, and while Lucas was somewhat reluctant, I wanted to take her out the following day -- there was an event about pinhole cameras at a gallery and she'd been wanting to go for a while. So that's what we did the next day (I slapped a hat on her so that the spots on her forehead wouldn't freak other people out) and it was wonderful, watching her run down the street gleefully, her first day of freedom in four days.
She's still spotty, but she's spotty-crusty now. We've been out every single day since the end of the quarantine (sans hat) but I'm not sure if she's scared anyone yet. And so, we've made it through our first infectious disease. Yay. Fun as those first two days were, I don't think I'd like to endure another quarantine again any time soon.