Whilst I wrote that early on Christmas morning (my time) it only got posted
early Boxing day (my time) because our poor little telephone exhange can't
handle the mass of phone calls that are made around this time of year. Event
he quality of normal local phone calls suffered

We had no broadband access from 11pm Christmas Eve to about 4am Boxiing day
morning - and all bar one of the technical support guys I talked to (poor
people having to work on Christmas day) had me convinced my modem was dead
and I needed another one, especailly when one said "has it been dropped
recently?". I didn't want to admit it gets thrown to the floor by an irate
toddler at least twice a day and 'accidently' bumped the desk off by an over
enthusiastic cat several times a week but had a sneaking suspicion that was
probably the cause. But one more intelligent (or awake, or sober) blokes
noticed that all many other users in my area were reporting the same problem
and had the decency to tell me so, and the proof of the pudding was when the
modem suddenly started working properly again at 4am today.

Why was I up at 4am today?

Well, its traditional in my family for one person to be sick each Christmas.

This year, it was Cary's turn, unfortunatley.

He was 'not himself' Christmas Eve aftrnoon, and went to sleep far earlier
than normal. But at 1am he woke up screaming - *Screaming* - and he had
thrown up in his bed. He continued to throw up until about 4am when he (and
we) finally got back to sleep.

Unfortunatley, you can't cancel Christmas, so we had to drag the poor little
might around to the various relatives, but he really wasn't interested and
just wanted to bury himself into our chests instead of playing with is
incredible haul of toys or consuming his own body weight in chocolate and
fizzy drinks as is traditional.

Today, at 2am he woke up again, screaming, but I think it was because he was
slightly dehydrated and had that 'dehydrated' headache. He drank nearly two
cups of water and rested for a while, but then at 3:30am decided he'd play
with his toys. *Yawn*

At 4:30am, Joel rescued me from the torture and got Cary back to sleep. this
morning, he was a little perkier, but still not himself. He refused
breakfast and lunch and still wasn't his usual 'into everything' self. But
by about 4pm today, I managed to tempt his apetite with tim-tams (a miracle
food!) and then got him to eat some real food.

By 8pm he was back to his usual frenetic mad, giggling happy self. All in
all, it was a better Christmas than I had expected,and I"m very glad, as I
always am, that it is over for another year.

Yowie