My turn...

...to have the stinking cold. My nose is streaming and bright red (I look a bit like Rudolf) and I am sneezing like there's no tomorrow. Despite all that I have had another few really busy days at work; teaching 2nd year medical students to do lab work, writing a grant application, and sorting out another poster among others. Tim still isn't well either and so he is finding looking after Alex that little bit harder...it can't be easy with chronic fatigue syndrome anyway, but it is much harder when he has a cold as well. I can't wait until our holiday at the beginning of May when all my deadlines will be over and we will all benefit from some much needed relaxation and some extended time together.

Alex is gradually recovering from his cold, his nose isn't quite so runny and he isn't coughing as much. Although he is still really tired and isn't eating properly he is back to his normal self in terms of playing and we have had the greatest of fun playing chase, rolling balls across the floor and playing with bricks. Tonight, for the first time Alex was able to take the top brick off a tower (about 8 bricks tall) without knocking the whole tower over. We also had a fantastic game of 'pounce' where I crawl across the floor and pretend to pounce like a cat on him while saying the word 'pounce' quite loudly. The end result of this is a very loud laugh everytime I do it..great fun. I have done some crafting in the evenings this week, which is my life saver, and have finished off the ATCs for the 'favourite things swap'. The three remaining favourite things were 'teddies', animals and butterflies. The mountain lion and butterfly photo are again courtesy of the National Geographic website and I embellished these quite simply with stickers, peel offs and flower gems. The teddy is a tatty ted which I coloured in with chalks and mounted onto K&Co backing paper and added purple shiney hearts. I hope the recipients like these ones. Finally I have also made my scrapbook layout for the week (my New Years resolution is still being kept!). This one is entitled 'Eat Fist!' and uses Bazzil cardstock and Junkitz patterned paper in blues and greens to match the colours of his car seat and his bright green trousers. The journalling reads 'Alex was so funny when he was learning to suck his thumb as to start with he could only get his fist in his mouth and was often to be found like this!' More soon,

Love,

Caro

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