Sick or Not?

It was a good weekend, despite some snafus, like both campers having mysterious ailments that seemed to come and go at the drop of a hat. I just dropped Noah off at school wondering if I'll get a call in an hour to come pick him up. I just fed Aaron cereal for breakfast, wondering if it is going to make a reappearance in a couple of hours.

Let me explain...

It all started Friday morning. About 5:45 AM, we hear Aaron upstairs coughing, and about fifteen seconds later that dreaded sound of you know what. Not wanting to go clean up the mess, I went anyway and saw that it was just mucus. He then did it two other times before we left to take Noah to school. Armed with a bucket in the car, he had a repeat performance when we were almost home from dropping Noah off.

So I made the decision (after a little but of disconcerting discussion on facebook... another story) to keep him home.

He was fine all day. I spent the day helping to get the gym at Noah's scout school ready for their banquet that evening and Aaron happily helped set tables, colored and did puzzles. Perfectly fine.

On a whim I called Steve to go pick up Noah so I could go home and make the salad for the banquet, and as I was cutting lettuce, the sound from the bathroom comes again, this time full fledged vomiting.

UGH! Now what do we do? In-laws are on the way to go with us to this banquet and neither Steve or I wanted to miss Noah getting his first scouting badge. But, once again, he was ACTING fine so we went ahead and went all together to the banquet. The food looked great but I had no intention of feeding Aaron, given his stomach that day.

My mother-in-law had other ideas though! She says, "Oh, he seems fine and is hungry so let's give him pasta." Sure enough, as we were getting our coats on to leave an hour later, Aaron again leaves his mark all over the floor in the hallway of the school.

Still no fever and feeling fine .

Saturday is fine. No illness and a great day.

Sunday comes. Awesome morning at church (post later this week) and at lunch, Aaron is refusing to eat. I sent him to his room to lay down and left to get groceries. When I get home...yup...did it again.

And then was fine the rest of the day again.

I have no idea what to do. Is he sick or not? He was complaining of a sore throat, but he always says things hurt so I don't know if that's real or not.

I have to be at his school every afternoon this week to accompany for the choirs (a side job I picked up for the next two weeks) so even if I kept him out of school, he'd have to go with me anyway.

When I was lamenting about this on facebook Friday, one of my "friends" from my old church accused me of caring more about my convenience than about my child. That really hurt and it is showing that remaining "friends" with some people from my old church may not be such a good idea after all.

I guess it would be one thing if my kid was drop down miserable with fever and contagious and I was dragging him all over the place. But the kid is fine, except when he's not. If we stay home, he just runs around and plays anyway, so what's the point?

Meanwhile, Noah was complaining about a headache again right before we headed out the door to school today. Do I keep him home? When I gave him the choice, he says, "If I stay home, can I just play all day?" which makes me think that there's no point of keeping him home. Yet, still, the kid wasn't feeling well and he still went off to school. I gave him some tylenol (with dye...had no choice) and walked him in to warn the teacher both about the headache AND the dye. Once again, I will be at a rehearsal all afternoon, so if I have to go pick him up, he still won't be able to go home and rest. He'd have to sit in the rehearsal with me, which he has to do later this week since he has Thursday and Friday off of school for conferences.

Are they sick? Are they fine? Should they be at school? Should they be home in bed?

So many times I have thought the hardest part of parenting was discipline and behavior. Now I'm beginning to think it's simply knowing when you're kid is fine and when they're not.