Not Quite Enough

Yesterday when I picked Claire up from school she felt warm, looked pale, and seemed kind of puny.  Rather than get her things together to leave, she just wanted to snuggle and hide her face in my armpit.  I was shocked when I got home and took her temperature (twice!) and it was normal.  (I think my thermometer might be broken.  Actually, I am developing a strong distrust for thermometers in general, because none of mine seem to work - whether they're for people or for meat or for the crock pot.  What's up with that?)

She went down to Grandpa's with cookies and stopped briefly at home before going with her sister to play at the neighbor's.  She acted fine.  I figured that maybe she had just been too hot.  Maybe they had just come in from the playground and she left her coat on too long and that was why she felt warm.  Maybe it was just a fluke.

Then I picked her up today at 11:40ish, and the teacher said, "We took her temperature at 11:10 and it was 101, but we knew you were already on your way to get Mary Grace so we didn't call you."  I told them I'd keep her home tomorrow, just to be sure she's ok.  I felt guilty for sending her to school (and grandpa's, and the neighbor's!) sick, but she hadn't acted sick at all, except for a few moments when I picked her up yesterday.

I brought her home, made her soup and hot tea, changed her into her pajamas, and she has been driving everyone insane ever since.

She's just sick enough that she can't go to school tomorrow, but she's not sick enough to stop fighting with her sister.  She's sick enough to be whiny and screamy, but not sick enough to hush up already and go to sleep before she drives us all crazy.

Mary Grace just said, and I quote, "Claire, you need a nap!"

I think it's better to get sick all at once and, most importantly, to have to go to bed, rather than drawing it out into several days-worth of being sort of well but not quite, but too sick to go anywhere or do anything.  I would gladly sit on the couch and snuggle and read books and rub her back, if she would just sit still and quit whining.

Of course, now that I've had the audacity to write down, "I wish my kid would get just a little bit sicker," she's going to start projectile vomiting or get chicken pox or something really impressive.  And then the other two will start, too, and by this time next week I'll be up to my elbows in vomit and/or calamine lotion, wanting to come back in time to this very moment and hit myself over the head with something large and heavy.

I should probably go bash myself in the head, on behalf of my future self, just to be safe.