Come, Mommy

On Tuesday I met up with a new milestone in my parenting career. Right around noon I got a call from the Waldorf School. On the other end of the phone was Liam’s sweet teacher, who was concerned because he was “warm, his cheeks flushed, and all he’s interested in is staring at the wall. He’s coming down with something.” She asked me to come pick him up and let him have a nice peaceful afternoon at home. Two days a week he stays for aftercare at school – they fix a hot lunch for the children, tuck them in for nap, and for those who don’t wish to sleep, read several story books, do a craft activity and go out for another healthy dose of fresh air in the play yard.

But that day it was not to be – he was indeed feverish and cranky. I’d never been called to come to school to pick up a sick child before, and I hope we don’t have to do this again anytime soon – poor Liam was sure he’d done something wrong to result in his teacher asking him to go home. He stayed home with me yesterday due to the fever. Last night, both Kiri and I became feverish and cranky, so I found myself in the pickle of entertaining two sick boys who both want to hang out in my lap and read books. The catch of course, is that neither child feels that my lap is big enough for two, so a certain amount of shoving and pushing results. And they never agree as to literary selection either. So we went the domestic arts route today, and by gosh we had some giggles by the end of the day!

Liam and I started out by making a new lemur tail for trick-or-treating tomorrow night. (SuperLemur is back in action for Halloween ’08, but somewhere over the summer we lost last year’s tail.) The new one took a good chunk of the morning, and it actually looks much better than last year’s creation. I’ll post a picture tomorrow when I get a full photo of SuperLemur.

By that time we were all cranky, so we watched some Sprout and took a nap. Kiri kept on sleeping, so Liam and I took advantage of that to make some dough for cut-out cookies. We got them all baked and decorated:

Special note to all you grandmotherly types out there – yes, he was feverish in this shot, yes, I know he has no shirt on, and yes, I know he should have shirt on. Liam remained unconvinced by all my logical explanations and hissy fits, so we went about life with a shirtless Lemur.

This is the first time I’ve ever frosted cut-out cookies - usually we put sprinkles on before they are baked and call it good. But the frosting allows for more creative decorations, plus wow, is it yummy.

We were on the clean-up phase when Kiri came back. We offered him a cookie, and then he got busy helping Liam clean the counter:

This is the two of them hunting down the last drops of icing, plus all the spilled colored sugar and non-pareils.

This was Kiri’s first ever time as bakery assistant, and he was pretty much wowed by the job.

“Mmmmm, I love to put things away already, but I never knew clean-up time could be so sweet!”

And with that we made it to the end of the day. Liam is definitely better, Kieran’s about the same, and I’m about the same, too, but at least we’re all happy and got some constructive things done today. I am willing the boys, especially Liam, to feel better by tomorrow so they can enjoy Halloween – I don’t want to be the one to have to explain to SuperLemur that he’s too feverish to go out! I will keep everyone posted, I promise!