Cleaning Out the Toy Box

Reagan at the Doctor

Yesterday Brian brought Reagan home from the doctor after she had 102 fever for two days straight and stopped eating and drinking. The bad news…Hand, Foot and Mouth disease! An untreatable disease in which children under the age of 5 are most prone to getting.

Rey is in day care two days a week and it had been spreading like wild fire.
Her teachers had been taking all precautions to clean as best as possible ~ running toys through dishwashers, washing blankets and sleeping cots. You name it…it’s been cleaned and then re-cleaned!

We thought we were in the clear and then Reagan stopped acting like her giddy little self and became lethargic and started whining and complaining. After her temperature spiked and stayed high even with baby Advil we knew something was wrong. Even through ear infections you could never tell Rey wasn’t feeling well. She always smiled, played, and slept without any issues. The doctor confirmed early onset of the disease because she had sores developing in the back of the throat which most likely was causing her to not want to eat or drink because it hurt too much. She warned that we would start to see bumps appear on her hands, feet and her buttocks. Some kids get it in one place, some get it everywhere. So far, she has small bumps in all areas. She is contagious to others, especially children under 5. Most adults don’t get it unless they have a pore immune system. So…I started cleaning like a mad woman this morning!

I emptied her entire toy box and started wiping down everything with Lysol wipes. I threw all the stuffed animals into the washer and started disinfecting everything that she had touched the previous couple of days. I’ll most likely have to do it all over again once her bumps start to scab over as that is the tell tell sign that she is no longer contagious. I wiped down all the books, all the blocks, everything.

Cleaning out the toy box was such a chore. I couldn’t believe how much stuff had accumulated. I decided I would do a complete overhaul on the toy box and get rid of things she no longer played with. The bottom of the toy box tends to be where all the loose parts and pieces of toys accumulate. I found broken toy parts, missing socks, a shoe I’ve been looking for, a small metal key ring and a spoon. Objects that Rey could have choked on even cut herself on. I had no idea how some of that stuff got in there but as all parents know you leave anything laying around for a second too long and your toddler is going to run away with it instantly.

I love the fact that Reagan was helping (even though mommy didn’t want her to touch anything I had just cleaned.) She understands that when she plays with something it goes back into the toy box and cleaned up when we are done playing. Teaching her this responsibility is awesome! In part because I’m a neat freak and I hope that she gets blessed with this trait as well! After we were done we admired (her from a great distance) how organized the toy box was and how clean it all was. Even if only for an afternoon before she gets to dive into it again we both had a sense of accomplishment. The great news for me is that everything is clean, animals, toys, balls..you name it, it’s all clean.

Hopefully the next four or five days will go very quickly as this disease passes on through. Now I have toys to donate to charity and even found a couple of items that would be reunited with their other pair, namely a sock and a shoe. It was like Christmas all over for Reagan because she discovered some toys that she had forgotten about and could take interest in. I’ll have to remember to develop a rotating system for her toys so we put them all to use again ~ I feel another blog topic! In the mean time as she is napping upstairs peacefully I get to enjoy my clean house for a couple of hours!

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