We woke up quite early, Isaac seemed a little better than yesterday, but then puked his milk all over the bed while I was making tea. We decided to cancel the party, since we all still felt rotten and also it was silly to invite a 38 week pregant woman over (Kate) when we had been so ill. So Clare was a little fed up, she'd been looking forward to it. So we texted / called people and tried to re-arrange for the following week.
A bit later on Debs called and said she and Ben would like to come over anyway and give Clare her present. They stayed for a coffee and gave Clare he chef's blowtorch - it would be creme brulee for pudding tonight, yay. After they left I went for my driving lesson, which went pretty well. Then I went out again and boughts stuff for lunch - mozarella and salad on ciabatta. An alright day so far despite cancelling the evening plans, at least we'd had a visit from friends. The another friend of Clare's popped round - Wendy - with a box of chocs for Clare, who was still a bit fed up, but her glum face was lifted by a special chocolate with a confectionary rose on top.
We decided to go out and buy stuff for one of the curries we were going to make for the evening anyway. A nice lamb curry with loads of spices. We eventually found the spice shop and then it started to hail / rain, it was bloody cold and miserable and Isaac sat in his buggy as though he was frozen in amber. If his hat slipped over his eyes he made no attempt to move it, which was slightly odd. We just thought he was still feeling tired, but was getting over the bug at last.
We got home and played with him on the rug for a bit, then gave him dinner at about 5.30. Since he seemed fairly lively, we cooked some pumpkin for him as he usually liked that, and he had not had a proper meal for about 4 or 5 days by this point. Bad idea. I sneaked a little bit into his mouth while he was yawning since he kept turning away. He clearly knew best, as the second the pumpkin hit his mouth / throat he forcefully brought up everything he'd consumed that day - at least it appeared that way. He was crying and miserable since it was mostly stomach acid. Poor little tot - he'd started to look a bit thinner in the last day or two, not surprisingly.
I changed his nappy and took his temperature - it was 39.1 (102.3), but he felt cold and was shivering a bit. It had been as high as 39.6 (103.3) in the week but it had dropped for a while. It was getting ridiculous, an 8 month old baby should not have a fever and be off their food for 5 or 6 days. We called the emergency doctor at 7pm, and they said we should take him in to be checked. Oh great, just about to put Isaac in bed and start cooking dinner and now we have to find a hospital in west Amsterdam. We thought about getting a cab, but then I convinced Clare to go and get the car. So she went off on her bike (10 min cycle ride away) and I stayed with Isaac to get stuff ready. This seemed like the best option since I don't have a driving license. I got all sorts of food ready, felt all pleased with myself and sat down. Isaac was really crying - on top of his two ear infections, stomach problem and streaming cold he was also teething. I gave him some 'Teetha' teething powder (known in the mum circle as baby cocaine). It certainly did the job, he stopped crying went back to being grumpy just like real cocaine works.
Clare got back with the car, and we piled in and drove off. Clare checked what I had put in the bag on the way and I realised I shouldn't have been so pleased with myself. I'd forgotten spare clothes, which is kind of handy when a baby keeps being sick. We found the hospital and sat in the waiting room for the doctor, at which point Isaac started to clown around and chat up anyone who would pay attention to him. He spotted a rather ill looking baby and started grinning and clapping. He was supposed to be ill, we were in danger of getting put to the back of the queue...
The doctor saw him and said he should have anti-biotics, which we certainly weren't going to disagree with. Isaac gave the female doctor his cutest, ultra dole-faced poor me expression and the doctor grabbed one of his apple red rosy little cheeks and said 'ooooooooooooooh'. So that was three women he had wooed during his 15 minute wait in the hospital. We had to go and find a pharmacy in Osdorpplein to get the medicine.
We went back out to the car, tried to leave and then realised that we had to pay for the damn parking ticket, so drove back in and went to sort that out. We also noticed that our front number plate was missing, oh and also that we were on reserve fuel tank. So we then drove trying to find a garage. Found one, and also asked the guy where a police station was to report the missing number plate. It wasn't where he said it was, so after driving up and down the road a couple of times we eventually found another one by chance. Isaac was crying again, so I administered more of the naughty powder whilst Clare got annoyed because we didn't know where to go and I couldn't look at the map due to having baby cocaine all over my fingers. The A-Z also had pages missing and was so dog-earred it was almost impossible to read the page numbers which didn't ease my mood exactly.
Clare went into the police station, and I stayed in the car with Mr. Grumpy who had calmed down again and now just lolled feebly and sorrowfully in heavily strapped car seat. I was prepared for a long wait, but in the end it was only 20 minutes or so. The police woman noticed from Clare's license that it was her birthday. In between her own coughing fits, Clare told her that she had notice the missing number plate whilst taking her sick baby to the hospital. Back in the car, I was trying to muffle my own agonisingly tickly cough, so as to not wake Mr. Grumpy.
Eventually we left and drove trying to find the pharmacy. It was about 9pm by this point. We had one false stop which saw me walking a few hundred metres around some crappy deserted shopping arcade that was certainly called Osdorpplein - perhaps the wrong part of it. We drove on again and eventually found out it was on the other side of where we had been before.
I went in and found what was more like a late night taxi shack than a pharmacy. There was a bullet proof glass screen between the woman behind it and the ill people standing in the crappy little waiting area which had a highly sensitive automatic sliding door which seemed to be triggered by someone farting. I got the medicine after about a 15 minute wait, and we drove home. Our luck immediately balanced out for the day, there was a parking space directly outside our front door. Well perhaps not quite balanced out.
We put Isaac to bed with a dose of medicine, and were now determined to make our curry, despite that it was now about 10pm. It was a classic Delia Smith moment as Clare asked me if I had read to the end of the recipe, and then found that the past bit was 'put in the over on Gas mark 2 for 2 hours. Well we would not be doing that, but we did still manage to break open a coconut, and also discovered that grinding fenugreek is akin to grinding fragments of gravelly sand. Unbelievable, you could use that stuff to make cement.
The day ended strangely well. The curry was delicious, we watched an episode of Grand Designs, drank a bottle of sparkling wine and went to bed feeling quite content. And there wasn't a squeak out of poor Mr. Grumpy.
