Bein' daily satisfied: The face of chicken pox.

Until November 2007, I was a chicken pox virgin. I have never had the pox, I have no siblings and these 2 kids are my only kids, so while I had heard of chicken pox, I had never actually gotten within arms length of them. That is until that fateful day in November.

It all began innocently enough. The kids and I were up doing our morning thing, nothing out of the ordinary, until, that is, I noticed a weird, red spot over the boys left eye. "Hmm..that's weird," thought I, "Never seen anything like that before." I called The Man at work to ask him if he'd noticed anything weird on the boy. "Nope, nothin'," he replied, "Except, for the spot over his eye where I scratched him with my watch when we were wrestling last night." "I think it got infected," says I, "it's all weepy and swollen this morning."

We were so naive.

The time came, as it inevitably does, to get out of our jim-jams and into our civvies (get dressed) and that's when it hit the fan. The boys previously unmarred body was now marred . . . with chicken pox, and lot's of' em! Well it seemed like a lot at the time, but as the days wore on we would soon learn the true definition of "covered with chicken pox".

The day progressed as usual, giving us false hope that maybe it wouldn't be so bad, y'know, maybe he'd be one of the ones who didn't really get that sick.

Ya. Right.

Spoke waaaaaaaaaaaaayyy too soon.

Poor guy. Look at him. This was the day he felt the worst.

He had them everywhere, in his mouth, nose and eyes, his hair, legs, arms, back, groin . . . there wasn't any part of him that didn't have chicken pox on it.

He definitely looked the worst here.

Day four brought obvious signs of healing and he was getting a bit of his spark back.

We HAD to get out a bit so we went out into the fresh snow and bright sunshine. I think after awhile, being cooped up is hardest part of being sick. It was great to get out of the house, even for a little while.

There it is! You can see the light coming back into his eyes! The worst is over!

Healing . . .

The ones above his eyebrow left a scar that I'm sure will fade over time but are still pretty noticeable. Makes him look rough and tough and hard to bluff and handsome to boot! (Just like his daddy!)

And finally, a bright light in the gloomy darkness of chicken pox-ness, a beacon of hope, if you will . . . a birthday!

HAPPY BIRTHDAY !!
The boy turned 4 today!

We had a small party with a few friends.

We played "Count the scars" and "Name that scab", ate soft, bland food and gave out goody bags containing calamine lotion, oatmeal and children's Tylenol. A great time was had by all!

Ha ha! Just kidding!

We did have company that day though. One of the boys friends, the daughter of my "farm-case" friend (see my previous post if you don't know who she is), spent the day with us because she was also in the process of getting over chicken pox and couldn't go to school or to the sitter's, so she came and hung out with us. It was great to have her here, she was a much needed distraction for 2 house-bound siblings and their referee mother.

That evening, we had a small party with the 4 of us and Grandma. Any excuse to have cake!

The boy got a Playmobile set which he was uber-excited about. He's a nut for animals so this was totally up his alley.

He healed up really nicely over the next few days. You can see that the one in his eyelashes is healing up and his eye lid is no longer swollen.

By this point he is all healed up. The only remaining evidence of the pox are the scars over his eye. It did take over a week to get all the scabs out of his hair. I didn't realize how many were in there until they were all dried up. (Which says something about how often I brush his hair, but that's another discussion for another day. Ha ha!)