Daniel Stays Home

Daniel woke up saying his stomach hurt. He didn't want anything to eat for breakfast, which is unusual for him. Tab and I thought he might be coming down with the stomach bug that I had on Tuesday. We debated about whether to keep him home from school.

"Do you think he just doesn't want to go to school today for some reason?" Tab asked.

"I don't think it's that. There's no problem at school that I know of. If he has diarrhea, we would know for sure."

"Well," Tab said, "if we send him in and he gets sick at school, they'll send him home today. Then we'll have to keep him out tomorrow as well, even if he's all better."

It's the policy at Daniel's school that if a child is sent home sick during the day he or she has to stay out of school the next day. Tab and I both thought that if Daniel had the same virus I had on Tuesday, he most likely would be fine tomorrow. So we decided to keep him home today just in case. It turned out to be a good call because soon after that conversation the virus symptoms showed up.

I spent a good part of the morning reading the end of The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe to Daniel. We raced through the last six chapters of the book. I'd almost forgotten how wonderful the Narnia series is. I can't wait to read the rest of the books to him.

Daniel only threw up once this morning and afterward he started feeling better almost immediately. So that he wouldn't think that a sick day was all fun and games, I set him to work on some English and math. His class is currently working on the past tense of regular verbs in English. In math they are doing addition and subtraction of double column figures. He flew through the arithmetic.

Later, as a reward for his work well done, I played a game of checkers with him. I just taught Daniel how to play checkers a few weeks ago. We had played two games then, and since that time, Daniel has played one game with his teacher. He's also played a few games of checkers with the character Hades on the Hercules computer game, but he'd only had those three games with actual human beings. Yet he nearly won the game today, without any help from me. For a little while at the end we were tied, each with four kings. Eventually I picked off his kings and won, but not without a good fight.

I told Tab he should teach Daniel to play chess. I'm in awe of people who can play chess, particularly those who play it well. Yeah, I was one of those girls who had crushes on the geeks in the chess club.

Wanna make something of it?

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