A quick catch-up post.

Wednesday night may have been my worst night as a parent. The cold M. and C. brought home from school has hit L. hard, and by late Wednesday, she was tired, cranky, sick of having her face wiped, and every cough made her start crying. So I took her to bed in this state, expecting the worst. Between 8:00 PM and 5:00 AM, she slept for approximately 90 total minutes. In between she cried, shrieked, screamed, spit Motrin out on me, puked all over me and the floor, gagged on her binky, tossed-and-turned, pulled the bathroom door over her foot and scraped it when I was trying to use the toilet, and then played for two hours, from 2:30-4:30, like it was the middle of the day and she was the happiest kid in the world. The last hour before Motrin dose #2, her fever was hot enough that I was worried I would have to take her to the ER. Fortunately, she took that second dose and quickly cooled down.

As you may have gathered, S. was at work. But one of my sisters-in-law and her husband were in our guest room, as well, so I was trying to be extra careful to keep L. sequestered in our bedroom. I was very happy to leave that room this morning. I wish M. and C. understood when I tell them I didn’t get much sleep and will not be dealing with their normal morning nonsense very well. It would save us all a lot of grief.

The cherry on top is that my throat is now sore and I’m feeling some congestion coming on.

Two fun stories from school.

First, M. has had her first dust-up with a friend.

Monday when I picked her up, she said she wasn’t going to wear her pink turtle shoes to school anymore. I asked why and she said that her friend, L., who also has pink turtle shoes, was mean to her and played with someone else on the playground that day. I made a comforting comment, but she wasn’t interested. She was through being friends with L.

We get home and go through the projects she brought home in her bag. One was a string of paper gingerbread girls with three names on them: M., L., and E. I pointed out that L. was on there and she said, “I made that before she didn’t play with me. She’s not my friend anymore.” S. laughed and said, “And so it begins.”

A moment later, the phone rang. It was L.’s mother. L. is one of the twins in M.’s class, and apparently her brother had told their mom about L. being mean to M.. L’s mother said she was calling so that L. could apologize to M.. We put M. on the phone and her side of the conversation went something like this:

“Hi L.
Thank you for apologizing to me.
That’s ok.
I’m going to wear my pink turtle shoes tomorrow, ok?”

It’s all about the shoes.

You may recall that a year ago, in C.’s 2’s class, there was a little boy who hit her one day, and she talked about it endlessly the rest of the year. Hell, she still talked about it all summer. The little thug is in the other 3’s class, and she mentioned that she saw him on the playground.

A day or two later, we had had the following conversation:

C: “Dad, when I get bigger who can I marry?”
D: “You can marry whoever you want. You could marry Cooper or Ben or Sean. You could marry Lance (the hitter) it you wanted to.”
She thought about it a moment and responded, “No. I not marry Lance. He would hit me.”

I figure that’s a good core value to have picked up at an early age: don’t marry people who hit you.

❖