We've been fortunate that Katherine has hardly been sick at all since moving to the new daycare. But it's gotta happen sometime and that time is here. Last week she came down with a cold, spent one day home with Ted but overall not too bad. The cold has been lingering since then although she seems to be hardly impacted by it. On Tuesday I thought that things had taken a turn for the worse when I got a call from the daycare at about 3:00 to inform me that Katherine had started throwing up. Uh oh. So I threw some work stuff in a bag and raced down the highway to pick her up. When I arrived I was surprised not to find a miserable little girl waiting for me in the office. Instead she was very happily playing with her friends in her class. Huh?
Turns out Katherine did not have her "listening ears" on that afternoon and was sent to time out. This upset her and she started crying. Well she worked herself up into such a gusto that she started coughing, which led to coughing up cold junk which led to...well...losing her lunch. Jason, the director, said he didn't he bother to take her temperature because she had worked herself up into such a state that she was probably running a fever for that reason alone. By the time I arrived they had cleaned her up, changed her and she had calmed down. In fact, she was quite happy. They even said I was fine to bring her back in on Wednesday (unless she really did start running a fever) because they were so sure that the throwing up was due to her getting so upset and not really being sick. When I asked her about being sent to time out later that night she said "Yeah, I got upset." That's an understatement.
If there is anything funny about the incident though, it had to be the other kids in the room. As I've said before, there's no secrets among this set and they feel it is their duty (and they take a lot of pride in this duty) to give you the latest news as soon as you walk in the door. The second they saw me it was "Oh, Katherine's been throwing up....she threw up a lot...it kept coming." One little boy was kind enough to do a mock demonstration for me..."She went HUUUUUH!!!!!!" as he imitated someone puking. I think someone even mentioned the color of the puke to me, no detail is too small or too insignificant.
A similar thing happened the previous week with Katherine, except she never actually got sick. That time involved a game of hot potato in which she was called out and therefore not the winner. She was upset when we picked her up and I think our presence caused her to up the ante a bit in hopes of some sympathy (Don't these people know how to play a game? I'm always the winner!). Unfortunately for her our response was something to the effect of "Well, everybody needs to have a turn at being the winner." That and the fact that it wasn't the day to get a treat out of the treasure box (that's Friday) set her off. I carried her out to the car where the coughing and gagging started. But other than some cold junk she never really threw up and she calmed down by the time we got home.
This morning was a brief moment before we got in the car (We'll just say it is first and last time I let her watch Nick Jr. in the living room while eating breakfast, I've learned my lesson). She started coughing and everything but she was able to calm herself down rather quickly. I'm hoping we're not developing a behavior pattern here and that the coughing and gagging is really due to the tail end of this cold. Because she's in for a rough ride over the next few weeks if this is the reaction every time we tell her no or send her to time out. And we're in for a lot of messy clean up.
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