It’s been a whopping six months since I last blogged. Obviously life threw me a couple monkey wrenches that derailed my literary plans for the last few weeks of 2023.

But that’s all right. Onward and upward.

Things around here are generally settling down, at least in terms of everyone’s immune systems. Mostly. Babycakes is just about over an allergy-induced ear infection. Sugarpie seems to have avoided the last cold of the school year. On top of having produced copeous amounts of nasal secretions for the last month, Little Bro has managed to pick up hand foot and mouth from somewhere unknown.

Freelancing hit a black for much of the past year, but things are looking up as I finally have a project slated to start later this week. I’m hopefully going to be participating in the next anthology from Lowcountry RWA (more on this down the road, fingers crossed). And I’ve got the post-Civil War historical romance in the hands of several beta readers in preparation for a fall submission.

But I didn’t come here today to talk about any of that.

I am here to discuss the onset of Toddler Temper Tantrums, version 3.0.

That’s right. Little Bro is into the tantrum stage of babyhood.

He’s actually got a rather extensive vocabulary for his age and is quite good at letting us know what he wants, needs, or feels.

But as parents across the world know, tantrums and meltdowns occur when a child does not have the verbal capacity to express their emotions in an adequate way.

Little Bro hasn’t been feeling well lately, understandably if you recall our house’s last brush with HFM disease in 2021. So that’s just made things worse. But yesterday… Ooooo boy.

So what set him off?

Well, lately he’s been rather obsessed with cleaning tools. Like mops. The electric sweeper. The Roomba (or at least he was until he pressed the button on top and accidentally started it, thus terrifying himself). The vacuum cleaner.

He also hates being confined and/or blocked or locked out of places.

Has that set the stage well enough?

I needed to run the vacuum cleaner in the living room, and he was insistant that he HAD to do it himself. This thing isn’t heavy, it’s a stick vac, but its length is like two and a half times his height, and it’s not like he can actually maneuver it.

I do hope his enthusiam for the vacuum (and the sweeper and emptying the dishwasher) continue into his teen years. I have my doubts, but we’ll see.

So I let him “help”. But he couldn’t really handle it, as expected, so he kept getting stuck in the corner and wouldn’t let me help him back up to try a different area of the floor. It boiled down to the floor needing to be vacuumed and me wanting to get it done so we could have lunch and a nap. So I just kind of took it away from him and tried to finish as quickly as possible, while Little Bro, wailing indignantly, chased me around the room.

At last, the job was done. I put the vacuum away. We had actually had to add a child safety lock/strap to the closet door, so he was doubly mad when I put it in there.

And then, I told him quite lovingly that we were all done.

Well.

This was clearly the most tragical injustice of the not-quite seventeen months he’s been alive. He wasn’t just crying. He wasn’t just yelling.

This boy was voicing his abject despondency at the top of his lungs – for a full twenty minutes – while alternating between trying to open the closet door and just running about the house with his head thrown back, wailing.

So what did I, his loving mother, do?

I laughed my ass off.

Sorry. It was the most hilarious thing.

I legit got to the point where I could neither stand up straight nor produce any actual sound while laughing.

Eventually I got him upstairs, where my mom (whom he calls “memaw” right now, but that’s another story for another day), read him some of his favorite books while I got lunch ready.

Of course, we are also gluttons for punishment around here. So after dinner, I decided Little Bro’s epic hair was a little too epic and took the hair clippers to his curls. Which meant more vacuuming.

This time I just put him in the playpen, so at least he wasn’t chasing me and getting tripped up on the cord while he voiced his displeasure.

Then today he gave us an encore performance because I took away the bottle of baby gas drops.

Fun times.

A few weeks ago, I talked about how Sugarpie came down with a nasty bout of hand foot and mouth disease right at the end of the summer.

It was not a fun time. After that first horrible night of no sleep, we were rather on the downswing. At least in terms of how Sugarpie would fair.

The Triage Nurse Provides Reassurance and Guidance

The night before the triage nurse at the pediatrician’s office called to give a diagnosis based on the picture’s I’d sent in, I did a bit of my own research into what to expect. The nurse confirmed that the only thing we could really do at this point was try to keep Sugarpie comfortable.

This would involve dosing with ibuprofen and using moisturizer to help prevent itchiness as the blisters began to heal.

She also shared that once the blisters/rash appeared, that usually meant the child is far less contagious, if not past the point of passing on the virus at all, than in the days leading up to the fever and eruption of the rash.

I also asked about the risk to Babycakes. The nurse said that, with older kids, HFMD is usually a mild issue that may or may not present with any symptoms. She advised us to expect a possible fever and maybe one or two blisters, if anything.

Here Comes the Internet to the Rescue

With Sugarpie recovering from her sleepless night and on the mend, I was in search of the best ways to help her blisters heal with the least amount of itching. The last thing I wanted was for her to scratch and cause an infection or scarring. Fortunately since it was super warm, I didn’t have to worry about socks or shoes, and we were able to dress her comfortably in softer cotton clothes. She didn’t get to go on foot for walks, though she was pretty content to be pushed about in the stroller when we went out for air.

I’d already learned the great things about colloidal oatmeal as it pertains to soothing eczema (which has always shown up during the cold winter months in little patches on Babycakes since she was tiny). I already had a little tub of Aveeno nighttime eczema balm, and we’d used some of their colloidal oatmeal bath packets in the past when Babycakes had mollescum contagiosum. A trip to Target replenished our stock of both, along with a bottle of Aveeno colloidal oatmeal body wash.

I also turned to one of my Facebook mom-groups to see if anyone had any other suggestions. Multiple people suggested colloidal silver, which I’d never heard of. It comes in gel, sprays, and drops. People also apparently take the latter version as a dietary supplement as it can help boost the immune system.

I opted for the gel version, since reports said it stayed put better. It dries pretty fast, which was excellent for Sugarpie’s diaper area after her HFMD rash went crazy there. (BTW, that’s a commonly affected area in babies and toddlers.)

I’m not sure if the lotion, body wash, bath packets, and colloidal silver did anything or if it was just the passage of time. But within a few days, Sugarpie’s rash lessened and the blisters began to heal.

The other thing I learned about is that, in babies and toddlers, a symptom of HFMD that is often unrealized or overlooked is that it can cause stomachaches and muscle pain. Headaches are common, as is a sore throat (usually due to sores in the mouth and throat) and loss of appetite. Luckily, Sugarpie didn’t have any issues eating or nursing. But I’d never heard of HFMD causing muscle pain, but that certainly would have explained why she had such a terrible night that Tuesday.

I, of course, felt even worse for how grumpy (to put it mildly) I’d been to her that night.

It Spreads

Sugarpie was soon on the mend, but HFMD wasn’t done with us yet.

About two days later, Babycakes crawled into bed with us and said she had a terrible headache. This is a kid who does NOT complain about headaches and downplays feeling crappy when she has a cold. So I knew something was up. Her temp was indeed high – over 101ºF. I dosed her with ibuprofen, and we spent the day pumping her with fluids and letting her rest. I made her take a nap that afternoon while Sugarpie was sleeping.

Well, I made her relax in her room with a book while I got her sister down for her nap. Then I made her lay down in the dark and cool for an hour. She fell asleep and I let her nap for almost two hours.

She was fine the next day, but I think that was her bout with it.

But then it was Mommy’s turn.

I felt absolutely awful the Saturday after Sugarpie’s Night from Hell. Headache, chills, general malaise. I knew what was coming. I even stayed home from church the next day (not that we were bringing Sugarpie, so we’d originally planned to go in shifts, anyway).

By Monday morning, I, too, had blisters popping out on my hands and feet. My feet, in fact, were on FIRE. I used the colloidal silver and also did a foot soak with epsom salts, which is another soothing option for older kids and adults (not recommended for babies and toddlers).

But within a few more days, we were all on the mend and just had to deal with the aftermath.