If you are a parent or protector of a child, you will already know that a ‘regular’ day may not go as planned. You know that life might ‘take you by the wrist, direct you where to go’ just when you had meticulously organised where you wanted to go (Thank you Greenday for giving me the words). You know the careful planning of an outing can go awry at a the flick of a switch, the drip of a nose or the rubbing of an eye.

It is still a kick in the inappropriate proverbials however when it happens spectacularly out of the blue and all falls apart. You watch the tenuously assembled card house crumble slowly, in slight disbelief, despite knowing that you knew that this is the way things are with small children!  As Gigi’s cartoon Ben and Holly’s Little Kingdom portrays life, all is hunky dory until the gentle twist of a wand with the incantation of a few wrong words makes a disastrous Jelly flood swamp over the minute region.

Nanny Plum (dark bun, holding wand) usually causes the travesty in primary coloured cartoon land.

‘Crèchely’ grown illnesses usually spawn ours.

So I can safely say that this weekend a Jelly Flood rudely squelched through our exciting Bank Holiday weekend plans leaving a sweetly sticky mess that just won’t disappear.

(I must interject for my US friends. You probably already know this. Just in case however! Correct me if I am wrong,  but…

..I believe what we call jelly, you guys call jello. What you call jelly, we call jam. We don’t call any food jello. I don’t believe you call any food jam.

Thereby we eat jelly and ice-cream and jam doughnuts. I think you eat jello and ice-cream and jelly donuts. Not all together. Unless you really want to!

Here endeth the lesson on colloquialisms from a non professional!)

The pop quiz is below. Is it jelly or is it jam??!

As you can guess, the ‘jelly’ is metaphorical in the case of my story. It is a metaphor for a 24 bug morphing into ‘suspected chicken pox’ and resting in an ugly ‘gastroenteritis bug’ with unforeseeable demise. No chicken pox. Just a rotten, gut wrecking, reptilian stomach flu.

My newly minted two year old has been in the wars. As I have mentioned before, My Two Year Old (love saying that!) was the central figure of a plan for a big birthday party at a pet farm on Monday last. Llamas and rabbits and pigs. Oh my!

Party was called off due to Jelly Flood (Euphemism for unpleasant effects of virus).

Or maybe you had guessed that.

The party is postponed really.  We will do it next week hopefully. This weekend’s fun however was undeniably murdered in a cold, callous fashion for our poor little girl. She could barely stay awake. When awake, she couldn’t do one of her absolutely favourite things. Eat at the table with family. No spuds. No yogis (her own term for yoghurt). No berries. Well, only morsels. She couldn’t understand why she felt this way and she couldn’t explain it to us. Cuddles and love were all we could provide along with fresh clothes, bedding and as much nutrition as she would take. Explanations weren’t explained. She is only two. She didn’t know what to ask. She didn’t fully understand what we said.

Tears in the night. Dry throats. Terrible coughs. Throwing up.

A relentless poison, this little nasty virus. It just won’t go away. It is a limpet on sunken ship that just wants to be left alone in its functionless misery. It is that piece of plastic that insists on sticking to your hand and won’t shake off. It’s that guy in South America who really, really bugged you and your friend by tagging along everywhere, turning up in towns that you thought you had carefully, cleverly chosen to avoid him, the person who has no money to gift a poverty stricken family, proudly boasts a terrible personality and employs a condescending tone with the locals in poor Spanish. Just go away guy. No one wants you around here.

Just go away virus. You had your day. Stop messing with our little sweetie.

It is her birthday. She is only two. Go mutate someplace else.

Baby Betsy has cooed and smiled all weekend long, oblivious to the contagion in the air. She has been safe to date. We hope against hope that the jelly Flood leaves her alone.

Gigi has been tired, sad, angry, temperamental and just plain old sick. It is now Wednesday and I have stayed home from work to be with her today. This bug affects everything. I work to get money. A sizeable chunk is given to childcare. She gets sick in the crèche. I am off work. She is with me. I am still paying them so I can mind my own baby!

I don’t blame the crèche.  The staff must get paid. Children spread bugs like London’s Elizabethans at the Globe theatre on a damp Tuesday in November. It is just a little evil twist on an already nasty occurrence.

Oh jelly flood.  I have watched you wreak your havoc on the Little Kingdom and here you are. Still. I just need my own wand to rid the place of you.

I know this will pass. The party will be great. It is just awful to watch your lovely little girl be so sick and for a dragging amount of time. On Monday, we cut a cake anyway just as Gigi’s Aunties had come home specially for the party from Dublin and Galway. We tried to keep things fun. Gigi did enjoy the singing and candle blowing briefly but needed to rest straight after.

We ate cake.

I hope so much that we see the end of it soon. In the meantime let chaos reign until order finally can win the day as in all good Shakespearean dramas.