While waiting, The Other Half suddenly received a phone call from his mother, after which, he said to me, “My mother is coming down now. She says that she knows the GP very well.”

I stared at him. “But why? How is that going to make a difference?”

He shrugged, “I don’t know. She wants to come down so we let her come down lor.”

I supposed maybe she just wanted to show off her granddaughter even though her presence didn’t change the fact that the GP couldn’t find anything specifically wrong with her, agreed with us in principle that it was probably because she was teething but stated that it was a viral fever notwithstanding, and send us away with instructions to give her 2ml paracetemol once every 4 hours, which was what we had been doing since Friday night anyway.

So we went home and tried to catch a rest. But The Peanut had other ideas once out of the heat into our air-conditioned bedroom. She proceeded to spend the next 3 hours or more bouncing on our bed between the two of us, beating us up indiscriminately.

Then my mother calls me and asked me whether we needed an ice pillow (?!) for the fever and asked me whether I thought that the fever was caused by her taking The Peanut out for a long MRT ride on Friday. I had to assure her that no one was blaming her and declined the ice pillow.

We left the house at 5pm to pick up my Mother-In-Law and Sister-In-Law for dinner. The Peanut, who had hitherto been bouncing around, was of course quite tired by then and lay her head down onto my chest, sleepy and subdued. When M-I-L and S-I-L saw her, they started cooing about how poor thing she looked and credit to The Peanut, she actually hammed it up by squeaking in a very poor thing voice occasionally and falling asleep with a frown. The Other Half and I just rolled our eyes.

On Sunday morning, she woke up with a rather high temperature again and we sponged her and gave her medicine. She ate normally but was just cranky, grinding her gums intermittently. We were woken up in the morning by a call from Sis1 asking us how The Peanut was. Then 2 hours after the first phone call, Sis1 calls again to ask for Peanut status report and tell us she was flying off on her holiday. Then M-I-L called again to ask how she was and whether she ate and all that.

The Other Half sulked. “This is too much!” he fumed. “My mother doesn’t even call me to ask me how I am when I sprained my back. What the hell, man!”

The Peanut proceeded to spend most of the afternoon sulking at F-I-L’s place and then Elmi’s place. My mother called again and I had to assure her again that the fever was not brought on by going out on the train on Friday. Then M-I-L called again to ask how The Peanut was.

It was getting really ridiculous. It was like every 4 hours someone will call and ask us how she’s doing.

Thankfully, she spent the whole of dinner last night sleeping and woke up feeling much better this morning.

Otherwise we might just go mad from all the incessant phone calls.

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