Lizzy is sick.
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| A photo of a curly-top toddler asleep on a blue-striped couch and a green pillow. |
It's nothing serious; she has the sniffles, a scratchy throat, a stuffy nose, fatigue, and a little bit of a headache. She has no fever and her covid test was negative.
She is, of course, absolutely wretched and miserable.
I mean, it's not the flu or covid or a bacterial infection of any sort. Those would cause a fever and/or a positive covid test. It's just a summer cold (yeah, yeah, it's not summer yet; there are three days to go).
But it's the first time she's been sick-sick since before covid started. She's had hay fever symptoms or an earache a couple of times, mild reactions to medications or vaccines, and only the Woodinville Evergreen Urgent Care knows how many injuries, the little Mad Scientist.
She's always had Really Big Problems with head colds, though, and this is no exception.
Part of the problem is that she has a number of sensory issues as an autism quirk, and evidently a stuffy nose is a really big one for her. Always has been, as noted above, even before she was diagnosed.
Like since she was a baby.
But the time I remember most clearly was when she was nearly four, at Grandma's house for the day because it's bad form to attend preschool or daycare with a head cold, and Grandma made her blueberry tea (nothing fancy; just True Blueberry from Celestial Seasonings and honey).
You would've thought someone handed her the moon.
We generally keep it on hand, even though it isn't available at our local grocery stores on its own; it's only there in the mixed fruit teas box.
But we didn't have any today and we were out of honey (we have agave nectar but it's "just not the same"), and we didn't have any of her homemade chicken-veggie soup, and she couldn't find any tissues, and since she couldn't sleep it all cascaded into her more-or-less devolving into that coldy toddler-that-was. Death of a thousand papercuts.
She's doing okay now that Grandma and Abby and I between us have provided the proper soup, blueberry tea (only four bags because locally they come in the multi-flavor pack only), extra blueberry herbal tea from Stash instead of Celestial Seasonings to see if it's a viable substitute (verdict is that yes! It is!), tissues, and a raspberry-filled donut.
And we're taking it easy today. We have the whole (three-day) weekend to machete the blackberry bush and plant the tomatoes and tidy up the yard.
Today is for comfort food and TV and books and tea and video games.
