Halloween Creepy Crawlies

Whelp, the creepy crawly COVID virus found us this Halloween. After 2.5 years avoiding the virus (by taking rather extreme precautions), AJ came down with COVID a month ago. We isolated him to his room, sanitized everything and came away with the rest of us healthy. Fast forward a month, and Teddy came down with COVID. 

His case came on suddenly, spiking a fever in the middle of the night. My gut instinct told me to check on him after debating for about 20 minutes. See, the tough thing with Teddy is that when he's awake at 3 a.m. and healthy, if you go in his room, he instantly thinks it's time to be up for the day and will not go back to sleep. But if he's sick, you need to check on him ... so it's like a game of Russian roulette of whether you make the right call. Given that his temp was 101.8, my gut instinct was right. 

We went right to work on the medications and trying to sooth him back to sleep, without a thought that it was COVID. When it was more of a morning time, say 5:30 a.m. and he was up and ready to play once the medicine kicked in, Dave COVID tested him. The poor kid came back positive so fast that Dave tested him a second time, thinking he had done something wrong. 

Nope, Teddy just had COVID. And by that time, he had already passed it along to Dave, who tested positive 2 days later. As of writing this, I'm still a negative Nancy, although I'm quite certain I'll be testing positive soon given the mild symptoms I have.

Trust me, we did our best to mask around Teddy, sanitize and such once we knew he was positive, but it's next to impossible given his lack of personal space, lack of comprehension, lack of personal skills (as in we get to wipe his nose or he rubs his snot on us as he flops on us - that's a favorite!) and don't forget the sneezes right into your face, even if you're wearing a mask.

The good news is that Teddy is several days in and doing well. We've worried about this for literally 2.5 years, and thankfully it's nowhere near the worst-case scenarios we imagined. (It gets old worrying about every little cough for 2.5 years, it really does.) He's hopefully past the fever stage for good and is not overly sick, although he clearly still doesn't feel well.

So we're getting lots of Teddy time, and it's interesting to see what runs through his little mind. The other day he gave Dave shoes to put on, ran and grabbed his swim bag and went to the vehicle. Dave still isn't quite sure where they were supposed to go swimming ... Today he did the same thing, except he grabbed a football. So they ended up running around with a football at an empty park.

He looks like he actually is playing football.

The worst part - aside from the worry the first day with the fever - was that Teddy missed Halloween this year. It's his favorite holiday. It's not about the candy for him, although he does indeed love candy and wouldn't let go of his bucket last year once he realized it was full of candy. What he loves the most is that he's allowed, in fact encouraged, to run up to strangers' houses. It's the best day ever for him, and we love watching him bask in his glory. So it's tough to sit out this year, but the silver lining is that he doesn't realize what he's missing. And AJ got plenty of candy to share with the entire family (and he should hopefully be safe this time around since he just had COVID).