Sick???

Monday night Kyle was seeming under the weather. We took his temperature and sure enough he was running a slight fever. He slept through the night fine, but was lethargic and repeatedly saying, “I’m sick” when he woke up Tuesday morning. He was running a fever. No way he was going to school. Owen was a crumbled crying mess the instant we suggested that he go to school without his brother. Then Kyle caught wind of it and he was a wreck over that prospect too. The two of them begged us — BEGGED US (with tears streaming down Owen’s cheeks and Kyle rubbing Owen’s back) — to please let Owen stay home too. Braydon and I ‘conferenced’ out of their earshot; “Some day they’re going to have to separate. But do we force it now? At age three? When one of them is sick?” We caved quickly. “O.k., you’re both staying home, for a quiet Sick Day at home.” Unfortunately, or fortunately as the case may be, Kyle was not sick enough to really be sick (i.e., he sure wasn’t acting sick). And Owen… well, Owen was never even remotely sick to begin with. A “quiet Sick Day at home”??? Yeah, right. It was a normal day at home (anything but quiet). Nonetheless, Sick Days — for any one (or more) of the four of us — send our barely-manageable life into a tailspin. If you are a dual-career couple with young children and complicated childcare arrangements and no extended family living anywhere even remotely near you, then you know exactly what I’m talking about. If you’re not, then all you need to do is ask someone like that and they’ll tell you: Sick Days send the whole house of cards tumbling to the ground. I feel like a juggler with all of my balls in the air. On Sick Days it feels like all the balls just drop, no matter how hard I try to keep them up. And then add that this is the first week of the Spring Semester for a Professor-Mom-Family… and that Professor-Mom is actually pregnant… and… well, the whole thing is just a mess. Kyle was bouncing off the walls when he woke up this morning, saying, “I’m all better! I’m not sick!” and very excited to go to school. No fever. We sent them both off and breathed a sigh of relief that we got off easy (just one Sick Day). But then at 10:00 a.m., the dreaded. School called to say Kyle was sick and we needed to come get him. Of course Owen insisted on coming home too. And we weren’t going to put up a fight in the middle of the Acorn Room. So home they came. They played and played and played all day. Again, nothing quiet about this “Sick Day.” They chased each other around the house screaming and tackling and wrestling, they played airplanes, they played dress up. We left them unsupervised in Kyle’s room for a few minutes and found that they had somehow gotten Kyle’s bedroom window open (like, fully open to the outside), and were spitting out the window watching their spit drop to the ground two floors below (talk about seriously dangerous; it scares the geebers out of us to think of how easily they could have fallen out of that window). At one point they jumped on the guest room beds for a full hour straight (remember that video Braydon did of them bed-jumping at the end of this past summer? Well, it was just like that). At lunchtime they ate their lunches that I had packed for them for school today. See photo above. Do either of these two look sick to you??? Hopefully we’ll get back on track tomorrow.