feel free to groan at the lazy title pun.
Let’s get the rash stuff out of the way first. Both Davies and Scarlett have had unexplained rashes over the years a couple of times each. Scarlett has rather more delicate skin than Davies and has had a rash on her hands and wrists with the odd flare up on her neck / cheeks for the last week or so. I’ve been treating it with moisturising skin cream as I’ve been pretty certain it is an allergic contact reaction to oils and perfumes she has been playing with and it certainly has seemed to flare up when she’s been in contact with something chemical-y. At the weekend she had very rosy cheeks though and closer inspection showed it to be a blotchy rash of some sort rather than ruddy cheeked healthy glowing. I’d written it off as further reaction to something she’d been touching but Davies woke with a rash on one side of his face / ear yesterday so I started to wonder if it was more than that. I gave them both some anti-histimine and it seemed to clear up so I thought no more of it.
Today when I woke Davies up both his arms, his legs and his cheeks were covered in a fairly angry looking rash, quite ‘lacey’ in appearance, flat not raised and not at all itchy. His lips were not swollen (as they have been in the past, as have his ears in previous rashes) but he said his glands in his throat were a little sore. I checked his groin area and it was painfree aswell as rashfree. He did have a small rash of spot like things on the inside of his lower lip yesterday which he complained of hurting and hasn’t mentioned today though.
Scarlett still had sore hands rather than a rash but her cheeks looked rash-like. The rash on both of them was not painful or irritated and disappeared under pressure. They are both incredibly tired and have slight cold like symptoms of runny nose / cough but I’d put that down to a mad weekend rather than anything else. Davies did feel quite warm to to the touch and complained of being hot but was not running a temperature or fever.
I gave them both a dose of anti-histimine again and the rashes subsided but didn’t totally fade. Some googling and reading back on their rashes of the past leads me to conclude a possibility of slapped cheek, some sort of post viral reaction which I suspect they are both suceptible to on past experience or maybe some sort of contact or consumption allergic reaction although I can’t imagine what. In the absence of any other concerning symptoms I have ensured they had lots of fluids today, a fairly quiet day, regular antihistimine and packed them off to bed nice and early (for all the good that did, they were still awake late 🙁 ). I’m being this comprehensive as I found it a really useful record to read back on ‘rashes of the past’ on my blog this morning by the way, not because I am trying to set a new record for blogging the mundane ;).
So drugs administered, breakfast consumed, daytime attire donned we were about to set off for me to go and give blood when I looked over the form and realised that I have a really chesty cough and possibly children who do have some possibility of something infectious so actually giving blood probably wasn’t the best plan today after all. So I reappointed that for a couple of weeks time and helped Davies boot up his laptop. He got irrationally upset when it wouldn’t do what he wanted it to though so I decided he was not really in the right frame of mind for anything like that and sent them both into the playroom to ‘go and get toys to play with like children!!!’ (or yes, I know how to deal with irrational children. Behave like an irrational adult! :lol:).
Davies made some marble runs and Scarlett played with Connect 4 for a while before getting out a machine that puts jewelled rivets on material for customising clothes and things. It was a charity shop buy ages ago and had languished in the playroom so she had fun with that.
Meanwhile I made full use of having a washing machine and a nice drying outside day and got lots of laundry done. I made the dough for some hot cross buns and sorted out lunch.
Davies remembered we’d not finished the Wildlife Action Awards so we plan to have a look at that tomorrow and finish off what we need to do to complete them. I read some of the book that I need to have finished by tomorrow evening for Book Club (rolls eyes at self and homework mentality to things I actually do want to do).
We had lunch and then headed into Lancing to get some medicine (we’d used all the antihistimines) from Boots before going to the library to get set up for Chatterbooks. Scarlett particularly wasn’t up for it today and was all tired and floppy and not really in the mood which made it tricky for me. I was helped today by Brenda, who is an Operations Librarian and pretty high up and important, but also the woman I run the monthly reading group with so know very well and have done since before I worked for the library. I like her a lot and she is an ex-Childrens Librarian before she got really important and misses the contact working directly with kids. Brenda had brought along some worksheets for the session which tied in really well so we chatted a bit about what the plan for the session was and got the library set up ready.
Another full house and another two parents coming to tell us how great they think the sessions have been and thanking us (me) so much for doing them. It has been very worth it for that sort of feedback alone I guess.
Today was about books and film / tv show adaptations so 2 weeks ago I gave them all dvd and book pairings to take home and read / watch. These varied from Horrid Henry to Swallows and Amazons with some Cat in the Hat, Harry Potter and Charlottes Web inbetween. We started off by going round the circle and saying what they’d taken home, whether they’d preferred the book or the film and why. We had a good mix of both and some interesting conversations about how the book had been kept totally true to, characters added or taken away, used as a springboard to base characters and ideas on and so on. We talked about books like Charlie and the Chocolate Factory which have had more than one adaptation and how endings are changed sometimes. Davies talked about Stig of the Dump which noone else had seen / read, Scarlett talked (a little) about Cat in the Hat. We then had a couple of the group who had brought along something to share – a short story they’rd written from one and a full on car chase scene using two toy cars from another as he gave a narrative of what was happening. It was the first time that lad has spoken in the group so I was really chuffed when he asked to show that as he walked in :).
Then I read The Rascally Cake but kept it inside a folder so the group couldn’t see the illustrations and told them to really listen and try and imagine the scenes and characters. They split into various groups of their choosing – some threes, some twos and a couple working alone and we handed out some sheets to get them thinking about how they would turn the book into a movie. We had some character design sheets with some ideas of face shapes, expressions etc and a storyboard sheet with some questions designed to get them thinking about locations, characters and action scenes along with six boxes to map out scenes. We also had plain paper to draw on.
The group had about 15 minutes for that and Brenda and I worked round the room suggesting and assisting where needed. I spent some time chatting to a couple of the girls about what they imagine the scene looked and smelled like and got some great descriptions from them. We reconvened and most of the group had something they wanted to share from their characters or storyboards. Davies had done some great characters and Scarlett had rallied and done a fab storyboard based on the book but taking it outside of the scenes in the book and giving it a really good twist of an ending. Some of the others had focussed on smaller details like ingredients for the cake, some had planned the location in great detail, others had worked really hard on character development. I was really chuffed to hear two of the boys plotting to carry on working on it at home and ask their mums if they could get together to work on it more after school this week :).
The group is clearly too big for even two people to manage when we break into smaller groups and the couple of personalities who can be disruptive just need so much more bringing back into the group than I have the patience for but it was a good session and I had some great feedback :). The end was rather tainted by our resident drunkard sitting on the bench outside and yelling at the kids which had one of the girls in tears and several of them quite upset. Brenda went out and laid down the law to him though and he was quite contrite afterwards but a shame it had to happen 🙁
I had a quick debrief with Brenda before gathering ourselves up and heading for home. Having flopped quite spectacularly in the too-warm library both the kids perked up when we got home and came out to me while I was gathering the washing in. Davies said he was wanting to make a log pile construction in the chicken run so I said they could while I got their tea ready. They did a great job of adding some logs to the run to give the hens a few more places to lay eggs if they want. They have all been really noisy the last few days and we are wondering if it is due to not enough places to go and lay when the need takes them.
Ady arrived home just as I was serving up their tea. We all watched a new cbbc programme about ghosts and then I read the first story in ‘the Happy Prince’ which is the book club book for this month.
I battled with the wireless router for ages, declared it broken, went to Tescos and got a replacement and then have managed to get it working after all. Grr. Ady’s taking the other one back tomorrow. Scarlett managed to take forever to go to sleep which made me cross as we had cracked that but clearly 2 nights of sleepovers in Davies’ room followed by another late night last night was enough to have her back being wobbly again :(. Ady cooked a lovely steak dinner though 🙂
Am hoping rashes will have cleared up tomorrow so the kids can go to their swimming lessons.