Home with a pair of plague-monkeys

After a big weekend including Lillian's 3^rd birthday (soon to be blogged, I assure you) I find myself home with two kids that are too sick for school. Tom's class was missing 8 out of 20 kids on Friday. Nothing too serious, just runny noses and accompanying coughs, fever and lots of 'grumpy'. Of course the kids being both home and sick means I am greatly restricted in what I can do today. Ah well. A spoonful of honey each to ease the coughing and the Wiggles on the CD player ought to buy me enough time for some quick blogging.

Its seems that Canadians were having trouble following the directions for kids cold/flu meds, and so a couple years ago the government pulled all of them off the shelf. Now the only thing you can buy for 2 - 5yr olds is the equivalent of childrens Panadol (pain/fever relief only). Bugger that.

I went to the chemist and bought a package of childrens cold/flu meds for ages 6+ which treats all cold/flu symptoms and conveniently lists the name and dose of its constituent drugs per 5ml of solution. Armed with that knowledge I was able to go online and research the recommended safe dosage of each drug for kids in the 2-5yr age band. And so Thomas (the sicker of the two) has been getting the good stuff and is able to get some proper sleep. So far Lillian has managed to sleep well enough with ordinary children's Panadol. Hopefully they will both have recovered before Wednesday, when Jane disappears for a few days of work-travel and I will be solo-parenting.

EDIT - This evening I received an email from the school principal. She sent it out to all the parents advising that there had been 2 confirmed cases of strep throat in Senior Kindy, which has been the hardest hit of all the classes (8 kids out on Friday and 7 today). Parents were told point blank to keep their kids at home if they have had a fever in the previous 24 hours. So, looks like I'll still have the plague-monkeys at home again tomorrow, but I reckon they should be ready for school on Wedns.