Arthur has been pretty under the weather for the last week – coughing, spluttering, choking and a bit snuffly. He’s particularly bad when he’s lying down which has meant a severe lack of sleeping for me and Sy (Tori has been gleefully oblivious in her own bedroom).

This means that now we are in that spaced out state of sleep deprivation where we’re either giggling like idiots or sniping at each other about nothing. Everyone’s favourite part of parenting I’m sure.

My spelling is suffering and my ability to construct coherent sentences in both writing and speech is having serious issues – often with rather amusing results. I have been fairly useless as Liberty‘s writing assistant too. She was trying to find a word to use in her story because the one she wanted had escaped her and our conversation went something along the lines of:

L: What do you call a pulpit that isn’t in a church?

Me: Lost?

I wasn’t trying to be funny, it was just the answer that popped into my head first. Only after I typed it, pressed enter and got laughed at by Liberty did my brain kick in and notice my uselessness. We never did come up with the answer.

The housework has slipped a bit because Arthur isn’t napping well due to waking himself up coughing so I never seem to finish anything as I have to stop and comfort him all the time. The coughing seems to scare or startle him and makes him cry – it’s horrible because I feel pretty useless. It has been a lovely excuse for lots of cuddles though.

Sy and I are sick to death of the smell of Vicks after dissolving some in a bowl of water every night to put by Arthur’s cot, which is in our room. It seems to have helped a little but that doesn’t change the fact that our room smells like we’ve been using the stuff as air freshener. It lingers and seems to be steadily spreading round the house – my nose is permanently running and I hold that stuff responsible. I wish it worked on earache though as half my head feels full of cotton wool and is throbbing which doesn’t help with the grumpiness.

I have gone out today and bought some ‘snufflebabe’ – a baby friendly version of Vicks. It is for babies 3 months+, and as Arthur is 3 months tomorrow (I know, where did it go?) , I figured it was worth a go. Anything for a night not involving dissolved Vicks…

Artie is getting better, he sounds less chesty in his breathing and is managing to sleep for longer at a time so long as he is propped up a bit, so fingers crossed we will all manage to catch up on our sleep soon and make our way out of this dazed state and back to normality.

Whatever ‘normality’ is…