Resilience

This morning seemed like a pretty typical morning.

I woke the girls, got them downstairs and got them apple juice, went back upstairs to get dressed, picked out clothes for them, went downstairs, and got them each something to eat (Allie's been on a peanut-butter-and-jelly-toast kick for awhile now and Julia had plain toast, so that wasn't too bad).

Then I got each daughter to change clothes, packed up Allie's backpack for school (don't forget my homework, Mom!), stacked up what I need to bring to work for the day, found Julia's mittens, and found Allie's and Julia's boots since we had a mini-blizzard today.

I don't know how, but Julia's feet seem to have grown in the last three weeks or so, because the boots that fit her last month now were too small.

I read Allie her school hot lunch menu before I started looking for the next size up boots for Julia in the back hall closet. The only lunch entree that Allie would possibly consider eating was cheese quesadillas. I told her that was available and added that dessert was chocolate pudding, hoping against hope that she wouldn't wrinkle her nose and say she wanted cold lunch.

Greg often packs her lunch but he'd already left for work. But she wrinkled her nose and I told her that if I had time, I'd pack her a lunch, otherwise she was going to have to eat the quesadilla.

It took me a few minutes to find Julia's boots, so I didn't make her a lunch, and the three of us headed off into the snow.

Four and a half hours later, I had just finished eating my own not-very-good-cafeteria-food-but-there's-no-way-I'm-going-out-in-the-snow lunch when my phone rang. The woman said she was the health aide at Fox Prairie school and I said, oh oh.

It turns out that Allie ate part of a quesadilla at lunch. She said it was burnt (which I doubt) and that the cheese was chunky (congealed, most likely). Aren't I a good mom for making her eat this?

She got over to the garbage can to throw out her garbage, bent down to pick up her dropped mitten, and she got a mouthful of stomach bile in her mouth.

She said she ran to her classroom and spit it out in the garbage can. Then she asked her teacher if she could go to the office, whereupon they called me, saying that Allie had thrown up and was warm (feverish) and could I come.

Greg and I did some brief planning and I left to get her and take her home, until Greg could finish something and drive home. Then I'd leave to go back to work for a meeting.

When I saw her, she was lying on a cot next to a garbage can , looking very flushed and miserable. Of course, she was still wearing her snow bibs.

We went home and she got on the couch and started watching TV. Greg called to say he was on his way home and about 15 minutes later, Allie said she was starving and could she have something to eat.

I gave her a banana and said we'd see how she kept it down. She ate it and about five minutes later, she asked if we could go outside and play in the snow.

Hmm.

Her daddy was not happy that he took a half day off to come home and watch her and now she wasn't ill. We talked about taking her back to school, but weren't sure they would take her (or if they did, we'd be the worst parents in the world to make her go back).

Allie had a bad lunch, and then she was better. What lesson have we learned, people?