Suddenly Sunday evening the fever appeared, and in the morning there was nothing else for me to do than to take our little guy to see the doctor. Fortunately the weather was perfect for a walk and my boy lay half asleep in his pram. We had not used it for several months and I do not think we can use it many more times realizing how long he has become. When I called the kindergarten to say that we are not coming today, they asked if it was the influenza, so arriving at the clinic I asked them for an influenza test, even though I know how uncomfortable it is for my son to get that swab up his nose. But he was brave and while waiting for the result he wanted to sit by himself in the armchair in the little quarantine room.
As I had suspected, the doctor came after fifteen minutes with a positive result for influenza. Having tested positive for influenza means staying away from people for at least five more days, so going to the pharmacy was out of the question, which meant another fifteen minutes wait for the nearby pharmacy to deliver the medicine to us instead. Later in the day we got a message from the kindergarten telling us that quite a few students had called in sick with influenza, and for them and us a week of recovering and playing at home was set to follow.
Fortunately the fever went away quite quickly and while very tired our son was soon his normal active self wanting to go the his kindergarten. Since that was impossible I tried the best I could to make a fun week for him at home, which meant reading books, building with blocks and LEGO, and playing with his cars. Building car parks and parking cars, building racing tracks and racing cars, playing hide-and-seek with cars, color sorting cars. When Thursday came, I had managed to avoid getting his influenza but we were both running on fumes and were looking for new ways to play with his cars. And suddenly I had an idea – what better way than to combine play and learning.
We started counting cars and parking them i shapes of letters, and my son got very enthusiastic and wanted us to write a whole bunch of different words with his toys. It has been a little on-and-off lately with his curiosity of letters so I will try to keep this new interest and momentum alive and see if we can do some more fun alphabet-play.
And tonight, while I was making dinner, my son was sitting all by himself making the letter A for my name and N for his. Seeing it made me very happy!
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