At Home with a Not-All-That-Sick MonkeyBoy

I got a call at work today, from MonkeyBoy's daycare, to let me know that he was sick - a hacking cough, torrentially runny nose, and general malaise. So, being a dutiful mother, I packed up my desk and headed out. I expected to bring home a lethargic child, medicate him and tuck him into bed.

No such luck. I gave up on the nap idea after 3 rounds of "Mom, I just need to get ..." His energy is boundless at the moment (he's trying to convince me to let him sit on the piano, and crashing my chair with a largish truck every time I say no).

MonkeyBoy does, indeed , have a cough and a runny nose. He's had the cough for 3 days now, and it hasn't slowed him down a bit. The runny nose doesn't even qualify as an irritant, as far as he's concerned. And the general malaise? Well, it disappeared when I walked through the daycare door. I suspect it was rooted in his discovery that acting pathetic gets you sympathy from people who are not your mother (and therefore can't be expected to know better). Either that, or I'm such an incredible mother that my mere presence cured him on the spot.

He's still hacking like a Welsh coalminer, a condition not helped by rambunctious feats of physical derring-do. I tried firing up a movie, hoping he'd sit quietly on the sofa for a while, but he's recently decided he doesn't like movies with bad guys, which pretty much eliminates our entire video collection. He even rejected Winnie the Pooh, on the grounds that Rabbit's hole was a villain for trapping Pooh.

Now he's hanging off the back of my chair, hoisting himself off the ground and trying to make it spin like a merry-go-round, and shouting arbitrary commands in my ear.

I think I have to go ...