She was up early again today…’round fourish. She wandered into our room and demanded a movie. Pop growled something unintelligible and Mom didn’t even flinch. Sunshine kindly gave up on us and wandered on downstairs, where we heard cartoons come on TV. We both just lay there and rotted.

She’d given me hope yesterday when the fever dropped down to nearly normal, but when I got up this morning she was all hot again. I made a feeble attempt at temperature taking, but sadly my daughter can NOT stop talking for the twelve seconds or so that it takes the froggy thermometer to register a temperature. It beeped at 101.6 the first time, and since my half-hearted, froggy-weilding pursuit of the Energizer Bunny around the kitchen did not result in anything more accurate temperature-wise I decided to just say yes, she has a fever again, and leave it at that.

I took her to see the pediatrician today because the length of time and resurgence of the fever had me mildly concerned. After listening to her back (since her front was glued firmly to her mother’s chest, razor-sharp little fingernails digging in for dear life), peering in both ears, and having a gander down her throat (a process that involved me pinning the arms and head while our kindly doc pried her clenched jaws apart and gagged her with a tongue depressor–she may be related to her brother after all–and thank goodness we didn’t have to swab for strep), he concluded that it’s most likely influenza. Joy. At least we ruled out a bunch of other things–the barking cough she’s developed doesn’t mean she’s caught the bronchitis that had Mom and Pop sequentially laid out for weeks in December and January. At any rate, the current prognosis is that she’ll likely be over her fever in the next few days, but the other symptoms will probably drag on a while after that. Pop is already planning to stay home from church with her again this week. I tried to talk him into teaching my class of 9-10 year-olds for me and letting me stay home, but no dice. He says he’s scared of them.

Sunshine is currently having a long nap, which enabled us to finish off Charlemagne today and do some mineral identification for science without her “help”–that was nice. It probably also means she’ll be up before the crack of dawn again tomorrow, but I suspect that would have happened anyway. I need to go start something for supper soon, and I’m debating whether to wake her or just let her sleep. It’s not as though she’s been eating anything recently anyway. I think today she’s had a few cups of juice,  nibbled two corners off a granola bar, and eaten a packet of fruit snacks. Unless you count staring at a bowl of oatmeal for half an hour or listlessly poking a couple of cheesy macaroni noodles as “eating”. She did eat a bit of macaroni yesterday, which is the only reason I made it again for her today when she demanded it after utterly refusing to even consider the hot dogs I was feeding everyone else for lunch. I think I may try some cinnamon toast and applesauce this evening and see how it goes. If she wakes up. Or something.

So, tomorrow’s Friday. I had intended to take both children to a homeschool group “thing” in the afternoon. Now I need to decide whether to just take Cricket, or keep everyone home. Friday and Saturday I have GOT to catch up on the laundry and see what I can do about making a dent in the chaos created by having a wild five year-old girl home all day. Sunday is church…better look at my lesson at some point. And Monday I get to drive up north an hour for jury duty. By 7:30 am. Oh, and please come early so you can find parking in the parking-less area where the courthouse dwells. And I’m not far enough away that they’ll pay for me to stay at a hotel. Gripe. Gripe.

In other words, life goes on. More later.

Mom.