This past week was rough. Sunday afternoon Alice came down with a fever. The next morning, she didn't have a fever anymore but she said her mouth hurt. I thought this was her way of saying she had a sore throat, but eventually it struck me that that was kind of odd, so I got a flashlight and peered in her mouth and noticed several sores. I checked her feet--she had two blisters. A brief reading on the internet confirmed that she had hand, foot, and mouth disease--again! We never had them officially diagnosed by a doctor, but we're pretty sure this is what Alice had when we were in Ohio over the summer. Apparently it can take all different forms, and after this week, I can say that I definitely prefer the fever-for-five-days version to the mouth-full-of-sores version. 
Simon also caught the virus, two days after Alice. His version progressed pretty much the same as Alice's, except he had more blisters on his hands and feet (which didn't appear to bother him much). To feed him, we would hook him up to a video then try to put pureed food in his mouth. He would open up the first time, then start crying in pain, and when he opened his mouth to cry, we'd put more food in. It was terrible.
Luckily, for each of them, the worst of it only lasted about three days, followed by two days of medium-level agony. They both drooled like crazy because it hurt to swallow. At it's worst, it was so bad that Alice actually stopped talking for two days, just keeping her mouth closed and answering with mmhhhmm and uh-uh. Both kids napped a lot, but would wake up crying frequently. For Simon, this was particularly bad because he normally uses pacifiers to sooth himself, but with the sores in his mouth he did not want the pacifiers, so he would just cry until he fell back asleep again. The first night they took turns waking us up, about every hour or two. The other nights they would cry a little bit, but were able to put themselves back to sleep. As parents, it was a tortuous week for us, not just because we had to miss so much work and the kids were so high maintenance. The worst was that we could not alleviate their suffering.
On the bright side, we did get to spend lots of time with the kids, and they would have some bursts of energy where they could play for a while. By Monday, they were healthy and ready to go back to school, and it just seemed wrong: I'd rather stay home with my healthy happy kids!
By Friday, the kids were feeling a lot better, and sick days home with dad can actually be a lot of fun!
Simon relaxes and watches videos after another mildly traumatic feeding session.
Just when things were looking up, Alice woke up Saturday night and said she was hungry. She ate some food, then vomited all over the kitchen floor.
And here she is refusing to eat because she is all better now and we won't let her sit on our laps during meals anymore.
