Sick and Pretend

On Sunday afternoon we realized that Jayce had been acting a little bit off all day.  He was being more clingy, snuggly, whiny, and weepy than normal, and as the day went on he started coughing.  By the next morning his cough was horrible.  A quick trip to the doctor confirmed what we had suspected, bronchitis.

On Sunday, Jayce just wanted to lay around and watch movies all day long, which is pretty uncharacteristic of him.  Even when one of his shows is on, he's typically racing his cars around, running the "Wipeout Course" on the couch, or in the middle of some other game.  On Monday he sounded horrible by was acting normal, almost bouncing off of the walls.  The doctor told me that he could go to school the next day so long as he didn't have a fever, but on Tuesday his cough seemed even worse, so I kept him home.

Today is Thursday, which is pretty much the 5th day of us being housebound.

Jayce normally plays really well by himself.  Even at play dates when the other kids grow bored and emerge to see what the moms are up to, Jayce will often keep playing busily with whatever toys are available to him.  But this week we've had to get creative since we'd been exhausting all of the normal activities.

Yesterday we played, Jayce Has A Birthday Party.  (Do anyone else's kids name their activities?  It's almost like in his mind these are episodes of the Jayce television show.  Most of his pretending has a title to it, which he will announce at the beginning. "Mom, me and dad are going to play Basketball Players/Push Jayce on the Bed/Dark Rescue/etc (Dark Rescue is firemen who use flashlights to rescue people who have fallen in the dark.  Yes, there are special Firemen for this very specific task.)  Anyway, today's episode was Jayce Has A Birthday Party.

I pulled out some scraps of Christmas paper, and we wrapped a whole basket of Jayce's toys.  Luckily, they were almost all tiny toys so it was no big deal to wrap them all, and about halfway through Jayce was really getting the hang of wrapping them.  He could wrap several toys using only 1 piece of tape, which I appreciated.  I cut some extra long strips of paper and let him cut them into smaller pieces with his scissors.

Then we headed to the kitchen to cook some bean soup for the party.

I love activities like this.  Jayce played with these beans, bowls and measuring cups for about 40 minutes the day before.  He cooked them, mixed them, poured them, served them up and then started over.

I love stuff like this because it doesn't make much of a mess, but even if a few beans go astray, it's nothing that I can fix with a broom and 15 seconds of my time.  I used to let him do this with Rice Krispies because it was what I had on hand, but I wouldn't recommend it.  It seemed like I could never get them all, and Chris and I stepped on a Rice Krispies for days, which is super annoying as you might imagine.  Another time a gallon of water in the pantry had leaked all over the floor, which I didn't realize until I was cleaning up soggy Rice Krispies.  Not as easy to clean up as beans.

After the bean soup was made and served, we went back for the birthday party.

Jayce opened all of the presents.  Since there were so many, had forgotten what several of them were and was genuinely excited to open them.  He'd say, "Mom this is my favorite one!" or "Mom I liked this one for a long time!"  At one point he looked at me and declared, "Mom, we're having a great time!"  So cute.

Hannah even got in on the birthday party, since she woke up from her nap right before Jayce opened his presents.  Actually, she got in on paper ripping, waving and chewing, which was exactly what she wanted.

Then Jayce and I each sat on one side of the ripped paper pile and let his car drive through it over and over.  Obviously, this was really cool.

This all went on for an hour.  As we were growing bored with racing the car through the paper, I glanced at the clock and noticed that Jayce's favorite TV show was about to start.  I informed him of this right after he said, "Mom, let's wrap all of these toys again!"  I'm all for keeping busy, but I'm no saint.

I fixed myself some coffee, played with Hannah and the paper scraps, and had two very tired kiddos by nap time.  A successful morning by my standards.