Sick Again

It never seems to end with us... Two weeks ago is was a stomach bug, and now it's a cold. Poor Marius seems to have gotten it the worst and was up all night coughing the past few days. Thankfully his appetite hasn't decreased, so he's eating all of his food and then some. I'm over my cold, and Simon is half way through his... I hope we are all back up to 100% by this weekend, as we're supposed to go to a nature/farm park with some of Simon's colleagues. We were at the zoo last weekend and Marius was loving all of the animals, so I can't wait for this weekend. I think he'll really get a kick out of petting some goats and sheep.
Speaking of sick, our boiler was sick this week too. A boiler is a water heater. Except they are way different from the US water heaters. The ones here are direct heating, so there's no water tank. It's fine as long as you don't take a 30 minute shower, like I was fond of doing back home... They also don't let you use hot water out of more than one tap in the house, as that's too much water to warm at once. There are other types of boilers here, but that's the most common one. It's totally efficient though, and I got used to the change pretty easily. But anyhow, so ours was making this huge banging sound when we turned off the hot water. A plumber was send out and came back 3 times of the past 3 weeks trying to "fit" it. Yesterday he broke the thing completely and told me that he'd have to order a part for it and we'd have no hot water or heating (because we have radiators heated by the boiler) overnight. Needless to say I told him that with a sick baby and near freezing overnight temperatures, this was unacceptable and that I was livid. He just said, that's what happened and it couldn't be fixed and he'd call my property management company. Thankfully they send out someone who only works on boilers, and they were able to come out that afternoon and fix it. I was so happy I got their work info and will call them to service our boiler in our new flat as soon as we move in.