Sick Day

Gotta admit. While my first thought when I realized Max still had a fever this morning was, “Poor baby!” my second thought was a little lighter on sympathy and a little heavier on “A day home! With a baby who will probably sleep a bunch! So I can pretty much do what I want to all day!” I know. I’m terrible. Just keepin’ it real. (For the record, Max isn’t gravely ill or anything – most likely a fun combo of teething and a cold...)
Anyway, a dose of Tylenol, a few school arrangements, and I’m back in bed. When the bigguns wake up, Ryan asks Calvin if he wants to go to Mrs. Pam’s or stay home with Mommy. He chose me. I’m touched. I also ask him, “Are you sure you won’t miss your friends?” Like I said, just being honest here.
Our morning started how I envisioned: Calvin playing happily by himself, Max sleeping, and me facebooking, blog-stalking and Pinteresting. Then Max woke up and Calvin got chatty. Max fed me animal crackers. And his fingers. Calvin showed me a few of his favorite pictures in a book about stars. Turns out they’re all his favorites. I might have been getting a little annoyed, until Calvin asked me in a sheepish and super-sweet way, “Will you play Angry Birds with me?” How could I say, “No – even though I’ve been granted a rare opportunity to spend time with you all by yourself and you’re actually being a perfect angel, I’d rather waste my time reading about random strangers and re-pinning adorable projects I’ll never have time to actually do. Maybe next time.” So, I told him I’d get down the game as soon as Max was done nursing.
Fast forward a few minutes. Calvin appears, with a slightly-guilty look on face producing a bag of Angry Bird paraphernalia (yes, we have REAL Angry Birds, complete with catapult sling and all – my big brother finds the best Christmas presents!) I immediately question how Calvin was able to reach said bag. It’s stored on the top shelf of his closet. His next statement is to be read with wide eyes, and a range of emotions from pride, to guilt, to absolution, in that order. “I put the bouncy ball on the red chair… and I reached it… but I didn’t fall!” OH! Well in that case… After a lecture on safety– and after I asked for a demonstration of how he did it (he failed to mention the dresser’s part in his brilliant plan), we began our game. It was actually pretty fun, but when the rounds were over and my little opponent wanted to move onto the next game, I devised the mommy version of the Great Compromise. Let’s look for fun kid ideas on Pinterest! It was ingenious, really. And it woulda worked, if one of two things were true: 1) We didn’t have dial-up Internet, or 2) Calvin had patience. We quickly settled on making yogurt and honey popsicles. In retrospect, homemade popsicles probably aren’t the solution to a patience problem. The next few hours included:
- Timer setting and regular popsicle checking, complete with races to the freezer and a pretty sweet dive across the tile executed by my little man
- Two versions of the I Spy card game. Calvin won both games. When I said I didn’t want to play again, he said, “Come on, Mom. I promise I’ll let you win!”
- Stealthy Pinteresting in between more-worthwhile duties
- Me laughing out loud at this quote my sister-in-law had pinned, then Calvin insisting that he would get it if I explained it. Somehow, he got it. :)
- Lunch
- Kitchen clean-up teamwork (Favorite quote by C as he wipes the crumbs off of the table, “There’s gonna be a little sweeping, too.”)
- Glorious, glorious simultaneous nappage (and by nap, I mean Calvin being banished to his room to wallow around in bed and talk in various imaginary voices until the timer dings and he can run back out, ready for action)
- Max and I acting as spectators for the Calvin Ball Olympics 2012. Today’s events included ball karate and races. Ribbons were awarded. I believe the blue ball ended up with the most.
- Calvin licking Max’s hair.

Finally, when Max went back down for another nap, Calvin asked if he could watch a cartoon. I agreed, though reluctantly. And then I let him watch another one so I could finish this blog post.
And that, my friends, is why I think God hasn’t made us rich so I can be a stay-at-home mommy.