mereilin

"The Terrible Snow Globe"
by Daniel, age 8
One day, I entered a toy shop. I was looking for a birthday gift for my friend, Susie. I looked at the train isile [aisle] and saw two things. One was a train with a re-railer, track switchers, curves and straights. Can you guess what it was? A snow globe! "Hmmm. Which one would she like? Maybe I should listen to the music of the snow globe." I tried it. Bad idea. I was sucked into it. "Ahhhh!" I screamed. Then Pifff! I landed in the snow! "Where am I?" Then I remembered I was in the snow globe. I asked someone how to get out. All he said was this: "Walk right around the globe and meet three people they will give you a quater [quarter] of a map I will give you a quater of the map. When you get all of the map, put them together and follow the lines. Good luck!" By the time I got the last peice of map, I followed the line. It stopped in a black dot and I found a hole in front of me. "Yikes! That is one deep hole. Oh well, it's worth a shot. Isn't it the only way to get out?" I jumped in. I was back in the toy shop. I bought the train.

I'm pretty much convinced at this point that Sadie is NEVER going to get better. It seems like she's been running a low-grade fever FOREVER (even though it's not quite a week). Yesterday she was diagnosed with strep and we started her on antibiotics. Today she was still whiny and feverish which means no school again tomorrow. However, since it was warm and windy and not really raining much, we took a walk downtown to take care of some business at the bank and the town hall.

That was the single high point of the day.

Danny walked himself the half block home from the bus stop and set himself right to his homework. The worksheet was easy. The "invention convention," not so much. Predictably he's going about it backwards. Instead of thinking of a problem and inventing a solution, he's collecting all the cool stuff he can get his hands on and figuring out really improbable ways of piecing them together before finally trying to think of something it can do.

I hate to rain on his parade. If he had unlimited time and resources I bet he could come up with something amazing. However, he actually has about three days because it was assigned during one of the days he was out sick last week, so I did my best to steer him towards something practical. I haven't even looked yet to see what he's come up with, but if he's able to answer the four questions on the assignment sheet and write a paragraph about his invention, I don't really care what it is.

And then he had a fever himself this afternoon, but it wasn't very high and he wasn't acting sick so I gave him some Advil and resolved to ignore it. Unless he's really acting sick in the morning, I'm going to let him tough it out. I'm drawing the line at extracurriculars, though. Enough is enough.

I'm still avoiding calling the dentist, and I'm ambivalent about whether I'm experiencing actual pain or just seriously squicked out. Either way, something's going to have to happen sooner or later.

And while I'm complaining, I'm Really Tired of being home 24/7 with sick kids while Daddy goes to work and evening extracurriculars four weeknights out of five. Even though I got out last night (to teach) I still feel very desperately in need of a break.