School Is Hard

Mary Grace had a stuffy nose this morning and wanted to stay home from school.  I took her temperature and it was below normal.  I was on the fence between looking forward to a day of snuggling in our jammies on the couch and not wanting to cave to what's probably seasonal allergies (I have them too) that she'll be dealing with until the first hard frost.

Then Claire came downstairs and said, "I'm not going to school either, I am sick, *deliberate cough*."  She also didn't have a fever.

Then BJ, son of two public school teachers, came down and was all stern and, "They need to go to school."

I'm not calling your mom. You got a problem with that, kid?
Talk to the bear.

So I promised them that if they felt sicker I would come get them, but that they needed to try to go to school.  I told them that they'd feel better when they got rolling.  I gave them cocoa and chamomile tea, emailed a warning to their teachers, and sent them out into the cold.

Sometimes school sucks.

I need to work harder at giving them more downtime on the weekends.  They need time to recover from a week of being busy and gone all day.  We have been trying to cram too many activities into the weekends, and it's hard on everyone.

It seems like they get home, we have snack and do homework, then it's time for me to make dinner.  They have a little time to play before it's dinner-bath-bed.  That's it.  Somehow the 4 hours between getting home and going to bed go by SO fast.

When they are home they want to run the neighborhood with their friends.  There are a couple trampolines and play structures that are cooler than ours nearby.

I miss them.

Maybe we need a trampoline.