hand-foot-mouth

This poor kid caught the hand-foot-mouth (HFM) bug going around, which was literally the worst.  The day before I took him to the doctor, he broke out with a red rash around his mouth.  I was sure that it was related to the strawberries he ate the day before, so when he started complaining about his throat hurting and kept swallowing in a weird way, I freaked out that he was having an allergic reaction and that his throat was swelling or something :/

As we waited for the nurse to arrive, I helped Colby out of his jammies and noticed the bumps on his feet.  Since Brooke had HFM, I knew what it was right away. The weird thing was that those bumps showed up overnight! They definitely weren't there during his bath the night before.  Sure enough, the nurse confirmed that he had HFM, but there really isn't much you can do about it. It is highly contagious, so we were basically on house arrest forever. I could give Colby Motrin to keep him comfortable, but his poor feet definitely got the worst of it. His mouth only seemed sore for the first two days, but it totally affected his appetite.  We supplemented with lots of popsicles and juice.

During our house arrest, we played a lot!  As I showered one morning, Colby tried to get out of his pajama shirt, but his method was a bit interesting...

It literally took weeks for those dang sores to heal on his feet and hands, so even though he wasn't contagious anymore, I kept him on my lap during Brooke's piano lesson.  He was content to watch a show and leave the toys alone :)

I've heard that kids only get HFM once, which I hope is true! Now that both kids have had it, we should be good to go!