The pace of life never seems to settle. There are weeks where all is calm, then suddenly out of nowhere weeks fly by and I’m never quite sure where I’ve landed. There’s been sickness around our house – nothing terrible or earth shattering, just the usual stomach bugs and other things that come with winter and children. As it often happens, the one of us who started out the sickest – Danny, of course – tended to be the least affected of us all when it came to this bug. Eric, on the other hand, spent an evening throwing up and then a day at home going from his normal self to tired and clingy and back.

I spent the day at home with him, and we even snuck out of the house for a while to run around in the cold after he finally found it in himself to get up off the futon and stop watching cartoons. Of course, a true sign he wasn’t feeling 100% yet was that after leaving the playground, I offered him the chance to go to a restaurant for lunch, and he told me he wanted to “go home and eat grilled cheese” instead. My son, turn down a restaurant? Never!

He’s since recovered, but even…nearly two weeks later? When did that happen??…he seems to have picked up on the idea of throwing up and not feeling well. I may have done myself a large disservice by having so much fun with him on his sick day, because many mornings he now announces that he’s “not feeling well” and he needs to “stay home and take a rest” instead of going to school because, and I quote, “I think I have to throw up a little.”

I thought kids weren’t supposed to pretend to be sick to get out of school until they were a lot older than 3.

We’ve known for a while that this kid is too smart for his own good. Apparently, he’s too smart for OUR own good too.