Wednesday, January 28, 2009

That’s it. I am convinced. I am going to Mommy Hell. Ok – well at least purgatory… Today I kept Sarah Anne home from school. She has been battling a cold for two days now and last night she literally looked like death warmed over, so today I kept her home. Not because I thought she was sick enough to warrant a day off of school, but because I need her healthy for our upcoming vacation for which, we will be leaving on Monday. Is this a viable reason to keep a child home from school? I am not fully convinced, but I do know that our plane tickets are non-refundable.
So, this morning, I let Sarah sleep in. I watched as her school bus made the trek past our home with some regret in the pit of my stomach. She woke with sleep in her eyes at 7:30 a.m. She was stuffy and had a bit of a cough so I felt justified in my decision. That is until 9 a.m. when she, now fully awake and fully aware that she was not being shipped off to school, was bouncing off the walls!
“Can we dance, Mama?”
“Can we go outside?”
“Can we play playdoh?”
“Can we pretend I am a horse?”
And that was just from 9 – 9:05.
We played playdoh and I ate my fair share of playdoh cookies while her brother mouthed an Elmo playdoh stamp. I pretended she was a horse while she ran circles around me in the living room and Aiden mimicked her high pitched whinnies. We danced to Nora Jones in the kitchen and pretended we were dinosaurs as Laurie Berkner sang the dinosaur song.
That was when I remembered the text message I received from a fellow MOPS mom the day before about meeting at the local McDonalds play land for lunch. Humm….Can I rightly take a “sick” child out into the elements and to a germy play land filled with other little children and expose them all to my disease ridden child? I texted another Mom to get her take on the situation, knowing full well we should stay home, but I was desperate for adult interaction. Desperate I tell you!
The response I received assured me that it would be fine to take my ill daughter to lunch, and that she was taking her son, who had just moments before thrown up. Well, at least Sarah is not throwing up, we can do this! I instructed Sarah to stay FAR from the puking child, bundled her and her brother up and off we went. I am going to Mommy hell.
What do ya know, we had a fine time. Sarah was right in there for a playtime, we kept hand sanitizer handy as not to spread the wealth, and even though neither one of us ate much, we enjoyed seeing someone else besides ourselves. I still have that twinge of guilt for taking my child out on a sick day, but after all – we are only talking about Jr. Kindergarten, it is not real school yet, right? I will do better in Kindergarten, I promise…
To top it off – we came home and I fed Aiden Jell-O. Hey, it was sugar free at least!

1 comment:

Jessica said...

We've all been there... that Mommy intuition is very precious and valuable :)