Cat is normally up by about 6:15 and Monday morning she wasn't. I went to check on her around 6:40 and she was still in bed. She told me that she hadn't slept well the night before because her stomach was bothering her and she couldn't get comfortable. I thought she would be okay once she was up and going, so I gently encouraged her to start doing her morning routine. She was slow all morning and managed to get herself ready and help out in the kitchen a bit, but never really did any piano practice. Finally, I asked her if she needed to stay home from school. She thought about it for a minute and decided that yes, it would be best if she stayed home that day. That's a big deal for Cat because she LOVES school. The few times I've checked her out at school she was actually mad at me. If she felt like staying home, I was just fine with keeping her home.
I didn't want to make a big deal about it because I was afraid that Jack, who has a slightly different sentiment toward school, would start protesting school attendance. When he found out during breakfast that Cat wasn't going to school, he immediately started telling me that this or that was wrong and he shouldn't go to school. He insisted that he was warm and I should feel his head. When it wasn't warm to me, he said I should feel it when he was drinking his milk. When it still didn't feel warm, he named another ailment. Eventually he just flat-out refused to go to school.
By this time, Cat had decided that she was well enough to go to school, after all. I thought she was putting on a brave face to try to get Jack to stop his charade, so I told her not to worry about Jack but to do what she felt was best. (She admitted after school that she really only went to school to try to get Jack to go to school.)
But even with Cat now getting her backpack and getting in the car, Jack was firmly planted on the floor by the kitchen table, sure that he could win the battle of wills. I knew that I could make him go to school, but I was also sure that if I forced him, his behavior at school would suffer. So I resorted to bribery. I told him that if he got two clip-ups (the reward for good behavior is moving your clip up on the chart) at school then I would give him FIVE STARBURST candies when he got home. Boy, he jumped up off of the floor and got himself in the car like he was in the race of his life.
After school we were talking on the way home about what had happened that morning. I said that Jack was acting sick in the morning but he wasn't really sick. "Right, Jack?"
(Laughing.) "Yeah. I was just JK."
Cat was still a little sick looking and moving slowly after school, but had perked up by dinner time.
Hooray for Mondays!
Love, love, love the play by play!
ReplyDelete