Toby’s birthday wasn’t a great one for the little boy. Both he and Nathan slept a really long time. In fact Nathan slept over 12 hours which is, for me, a reason to be concerned that he is getting sick. Nathan doesn’t generally sleep more than 10 hours, and if he sleeps more than 11 hours it is typically a sign that he is coming down with something.

When the boys were awake, Nathan stuck up all the decorations he had made and he put out the sign on the camper to tell everyone that it was Toby’s birthday. He was very excited to be putting them up, and Toby was pretty pleased with them as well. We had two lots of people visit to wish Toby a happy birthday, so Nathan was pleased that his sign worked, though in reality they were all people we’ve had a bit to do with and their visit was nothing to do with the sign.

We made pancakes for breakfast but Toby didn’t feel like eating them, and he had jelly for breakfast instead. We made the cake and put it in the Weber and then we opened a few presents. Pretty much as soon as that was done Toby wanted to go back to bed and that’s where he spent the rest of the day. He was so very miserable that we rang the medical centre at Jindabyne and were told that if we wanted Toby to see a doctor we had to be there before 4 pm.

So we packed up the campsite and headed into town. We had to wait a while to see the doctor, and when we got into his office Toby didn’t want to have anything to do with him. He tried to bribe Toby with stickers, but there were no train ones. Then he tried lollies, but the first one Toby got was a caramel one and he thought it was chocolate and didn’t want it, so the doctor went looking and found a green snake for him. Toby didn’t want to eat it, he just held onto it while the doctor listened to his chest and looked in his ears and mouth. He still had an elevated temperature, and after getting a quick glimpse of his mouth he decided Toby had an infected throat and prescribed some antibiotics. Before we left I asked the doctor just to take Nathan’s temperature as he seemed a bit hot to me and hadn’t been himself all day. The doctor said he was fine but humoured me, just to discover that indeed Nathan also had an elevated temperature and further discovered that Nathan also had red ears and a red throat. So Nathan was also prescribed antibiotics.

We went to the chemist to get the prescriptions filled, then down to the supermarket to get more jelly, back to the chemist to pick up the medicine and finally made it back to the campsite. Toby was looking a little better, so we quickly iced the cake, sang happy birthday and Toby opened his last present. He played for a bit with his new toys and then I tried to give Toby his medicine before dinner and Toby refused. The idea of having medicine, or my attempt at giving him some medicine, upset him so much that he went back to bed and went to sleep.

As far as I could tell from Toby’s cries all night his sleep was full of nightmares about Nathan doing things Toby didn’t want him to do, not getting his watermelon the way he wanted it, and me trying to give him medicine.