First of all that made me laugh. Dwight definitely has a reputation for sleep in our family. But after the initial chuckle, I was slightly alarmed that she *wanted* to sleep in the middle of the afternoon. I offered to let her lie down in my bed while I folded laundry and before I knew it, she was out like a light...for several hours. More alarm bells were going off. For the next several days she was a mess. Her eyes were so blood shot and watery. She had a high fever. I felt miserable just looking at her so I can only imagine how she felt. But she eventually got over it. When she was still coughing a few days later, I got nervous about the HSP returning so I took her to the doctor, She shared my speculation that Kiersten had had the flu.
A few days later, I picked Oskar up from an activity and was surprised to hear that he'd fallen asleep in the middle of it. I got him home, took his temperature and sure enough - a fever. He followed Kiersten's pattern almost exactly. I can just copy and paste from Wikipedia's influenza entry for their symptoms, "The most common symptoms are chills, fever, sore throat, muscle pains, headache (often severe), coughing, weakness/fatigue and general discomfort." With an apparent flu epidemic sweeping the nation at the moment, it seems a pretty safe bet that they had the flu.
Another week passes and then Annika comes home, says she doesn't feel well and falls asleep for several hours. Well now I know the drill.
Of course now I can't help but wonder if Kardynn will come home after school one day next week and fall asleep for several hours. Although, I know she fell asleep once for several hours during the holidays so I'm hoping maybe she already had her run-in with the flu and it just didn't hit her as hard as it hit the others.
Hopefully Dwight and I continue to evade this!
Anyway, when the bug hits, they all end up missing several days of school. When they're sick I don't mind if they sit around and watch TV or play on their laptops. Kiersten has really gotten into e-mail. The kids only have a handful of people that they e-mail but Kiersten has been sending those few people a lot of messages in the last few weeks.
One of her favorite e-mail recipients is my Mom. She's always asking my mom to send her jokes. Although I don't think my mom minds - particularly when she's traveling. (Mom frequently points out that only one of her four children is good about keeping in touch...and no, that child is not me.)
Mom actually travels a lot and most of her travels are international. Unfortunately this means her laptop ends up in some sketchy places...like Nigeria. (It's no coincidence that those "send-me-your-bank-account-number e-mails" are often called "Nigerian e-mail scams".) Numerous times she's tried to legitimately connect to sites and had them lock her account because they could see she was trying to connect from Nigeria. Nigeria is a seriously hostile environment for your computer. And it would seem that she did indeed get her e-mail hacked the last time she was there because suddenly my kids are getting fake e-mails from her.
Up until now, we've not had to worry too much about their e-mail accounts because of the small number of people that they exchange e-mails with. But these spam e-mails made me realize that I needed to have a conversation with the kids and explain about some of the perils of the Internet - specifically viruses. Because, while I'm jaded and wary, I was certain that my sweet, innocent children would click on any links that came from their grandmother.
I knew the message had gotten through when earlier this week Kiersten informed me that she'd gotten a flu message from Grandma.
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