Birthday parties, nursery, or any contact with humans at all seem to be ripe opportunities for your three year old to get ill. Which causes havoc akin to the house burning down, being robbed or a death in the family for any adults with responsibility for said kid.
While Iu worked late today for one of her big client meetings tomorrow, I lay in bed with the gurgling, nasally constricted and gasping Loki as he moaned his way through the early stages of sleep, squeaking 'mummy, where's mummy, ...(death rattle)... snore'.
Aside from the anxiety caused by listening to a kid with a blocked nose taking ages to breathe in - there's a pause each time that makes you think he's forgotten how to do it - followed by a bubbly rasp and then deep inhalation, it's really quite inconvenient just lying in bed waiting for the bugger to totally pass out.
As you're lying there listening to Loki's wheezing and struggles for breath - you can't help think of the noises Denis Hopper made in the movie 'Blue Velvet', clasping the oxygen mask to his face in that weird sexy scene with Isabella Rossellini. Wheeze, snort, gurgle.
And then your mind drifts to that guy who was executed in Alabama using nitrogen gas in an untested method of Government sponsored killing which took 28 minutes to bump him off, much of which was in pain and involved gasping and coughing (and some thrashing), similar to Loki's grim exhortations.
It's hardly the Gruffalo is it?
Anyway, all this illness really does get in the way of having a balanced meal in the evening. Murder for the diet.
So much empathy