Our eldest was the first to be afflicted, when a mild but lingering sore throat developed overnight into a three-day frenzy of anguished screaming and terrifying vomiting. For a few nights, my wife and I exchanged a large proportion of our precious sleep for sustained periods of being drenched in torrents of phlegmy puke. We spent hours sat up in bed feeding our daughter's obsession with her pacifying Very Best of Elmo DVD. It is a good DVD, to be fair. It's got Ray Charles in it. And somebody called Jason Mraz, who appears to have converted a hit single of his into a bizarre but curiously endearing anthem to overcoming agoraphobia, all for Elmo's benefit.
I digress. It was a huge relief when our daughter's symptoms advanced to mere snot and coughing, which eventually subsided to a state of near normality. If anything we were all slightly disappointed to wave goodbye to her husky voice, which added a further dimension to her unique, cheeky charm. The days of pent-up hyperactivity with which she met her recovery were as difficult to manage as the horrors that preceded them, but much more enjoyable.
And this prolonged burst of physical enthusiasm coincided perfectly with our younger daughter's submission to the bug. We had known that it was only a question of when the same symptoms would be repeated in her. The only mercy was that - being only a couple of months old - her usual habits weren't too different from the major effects of the cold: screaming, vomiting and sleeplessness. The trouble was that - even at the best of times - our daughter's default scream sears furiously through the darkest corners of the brain of anyone within earshot. My wife and I have by now adjusted to this sonic peril where others find it hard to bear; we have even come to view it with a sense of pride. But such was the obvious distress caused to our daughter by her illness that the scream's magnitude became all the more severe.
I can only apologise to our neighbours.
Thankfully, a mild rattle in her chest is all that remains of our youngest's plight. She is back to being the relatively peaceful and cheerful young lady that I intended to be boasting about here two weeks ago. Popular wisdom contends that young babies are incapable of genuinely smiling. If they appear to do so, continues popular wisdom, somewhat arrogantly, it is simply because of wind. I can refute this claim with absolute certainty, citing the fact that - since she was only about six weeks old - our second daughter has greeted the sight of Mummy's milk dispensers with a knowing grin and even an occasional chuckle. The cause of this reaction soon expanded to include Mummy's face. Since her recovery from the great plague of 2011, my daughter now sometimes offers the same beaming smile in response to my own appearance in her eyeline.
This pleases me greatly, in turn causing me to smile. Regardless of whether or not I have wind.
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