Chicken Pox?

It looks quite likely that my 2.5 year old has just begun her chicken pox experience. I think you can't technically claim a diagnosis this early in the game, but the rash on her chest and upper abdomen definitely looks like it to me. And I had it just over four years ago. :-P She doesn't seem sick like I felt, though. I'm just hoping my 1 year old will get it soon, too, so they can get it all out of the way in fairly short order. If not, I have to wait three weeks after the last lesions crust over to be sure that the younger child had a sufficient incubating period to be sure she won't be contagious if we go somewhere. Since the disease is usually contagious for about a week, that week plus three weeks will mean being stuck at home for about a month. I guess I don't go many places as it is, but now we won't even get to go to church or the grocery store.

But that's a worst case scenario, assuming that Mary doesn't just get it and get it over with soon. Presumably she and Felicity would both have been exposed to it in the same place at the same time, right? :-P So theoretically she could get it from that exposure and not have to wait the ten days or whatever minimum it is from exposure to Felicity. We shall see.

Meantime, Josh is preparing to be away from us for the first time since we've had children. We have had two separate nights apart in our married life and both were prior to having kids. This time it will be three nights in a row and, unlike the past times where we were actually in relative proximity, he'll be five hours away from us. I'm sure this is lame compared to deployments and long-term or frequent business trips, but we're not looking forward to it. The girls are very attached to their daddy, and I am, too. And Josh seems to like us. And we just have a very happy routine. This morning, Josh had to leave early for work, so Felicity was quite upset when she woke up and couldn't find him anywhere in the house. :-( Mary has gotten to where she starts yelling at the door when Josh leaves for work. I would say crying, but it's more of a mad cry than anything. Of course, maybe she just thinks she needs to get out of the house and that it's unfair for him not to take her. I really don't know.

I was planning to take advantage of my opportunity to use the car while Josh is gone, but if I'm stuck at home with a sick child, I guess I'm going to have to change plans a bit. Maybe I can get Josh to shop for me before he leaves. And maybe I can just do Christmas shopping entirely online. Amazon says their cutoff date for super saver shipping (for Christmas) is the 15th, so I'm planning to order stuff a couple days before that. I prefer to be able to go to a store and buy stuff and not have to worry about waiting for it to arrive, but getting to the store is quite a task these days. So online it is and I'm thankful for the option. Used to be we had to mail in orders and use catalogs. ;-) LOL!