Bringing those 2022 virusses into 2023

The last days of school in December were already ominous  ..."class 3 had only 7 kids in it today".  Oops, viruses were surely going around.  Unlike 2021 when all classes seemed to go subsequently into quarantine for Covid in December, including Kabouter's...now classes stayed open, but multiple viruses were going around happily. 

We picked up the children from school on the last Friday and Kabouter was really whiny. While I was getting him ready for a Friday evening scouting session, he claimed he was hot...BANG, yep, fever was in the house at the start of our Christmas vacation period. 

Fortunately, there's not much that some child paracetamol can't fix, so he didn't suffer too badly. He didn't seem to have a real flu, but more a terrible cold.  He went up and down, but was never awful.

We survived the Christmas days without too much adaptation of our plans and headed to the east of Belgium, were we all seemed fine. With a feverless day, Kabouter all of a sudden got a new spike and Beertje joined in. Oh joy. From then on, it was Beertje going up and down in temperature.  With the horrible weather and the children not being fully healthy, we were just stuck inside and by the end of the week I got cabin fever in the Ardennes and really wanted to return back to Leuven, closer to the pharmacies and doctor's offices. 

Like the previous weekend, the holidays at the change of the year seemed a bit better.  I thought we were getting out of the virus zone, when early in the new year, Beertje started to complain about his aching ear.  Oh just great, somehow he had obtained an ear infection after a week of battling virusses already.  We waited it out for another 3 days, but without improvement, we had to start antibiotics.  With a lot of supply of medication, we returned to the east of Belgium.  And then finally we were on the mend with both boys being wild and noisy in the house. I sometimes regretted them feeling better, I must admit.  Anyway...by the end of our vacation period, we only had some snotty noses left.