Glad it's today

I have never been quite so happy to say good riddance to a day as I was to yesterday. It was going along swimmingly until I got to school to pick Rose up and the teacher said that she had been very quiet and subdued. I immediately noticed that she was wearing her cardie which I thought was a tad off since it was 84 degrees. I placed my hand on her head and bingo, it was hot. We came home and I took her temperature. One sick kidlet. She was out for the count pretty much for the rest of the afternoon.

I had no choice but to take her with me to pick up Lily but that involves very little. Park the car, walk to the gate, kiss Lily, walk back to the car, drive home. Yesterday I carried Rosie instead of letting her walk and when Lily came out of her gate she walked straight to me, all alone, and looked up at me with a tear running down her cheek. I froze. Lily crying? It never happens. I asked her what was wrong. She didn't speak, instead a tidal wave of tears streaked her face. I was ready to shake the answer out of her as I knew it had to be something terrible for her to cry and even worse for her to cry in front of other people. One of her body parts must be about to fall off.

Through her tears she told me she got her FCAT results and that she had done really badly. I asked her what she had done. She told me. Her score was a passing score but it wasnt the highest score you can get. Last year she got the highest scores possible. This year she didn't and she was so disappointed. She was heart broken. It took over 3 hours to console her. Before you judge my child I will ask you a question? Have you raised perfectionist child? If not don't judge her or me. It is murderous. It is the hardest thing in the world. This girl sets the highest standards for herself and accepts nothing less than perfect, ever. Usually the highest marks come easily, this time they didn't. I would love to know what happened, what went wrong but I will never know. What did she do wrong?

As cruel as this sounds, I for one am glad this happened to her. She needed this lesson. It hurt my heart also to see her sad, to listen to her question herself but she needs to know that you can pass something without a perfect score and that it is acceptable. She needs to know that sometimes life doesn't go the way you want it to go. That sometimes when you think the world is about to crash and burn around your feet, it won't and that tomorrow will come and that you will be able to face it. One thing that really hurt her was the fact that some of the kids in her class relished the fact that she didn't do so well. I tried to explain to her that for once they got to beat her and it felt good. It wasn't that they were happy that she didn't get the highest score. It just compounded her sadness to have her best friend laugh at her face. (actually I think it sucked)

The child was a hot mess and it was heart breaking. She did eventually calm down and we talked about every aspect of her pain. She had swimming last night and I was glad to know that she would be able to get some of her frustration out. Five minutes after getting into the pool the lightening monitors went off and the pool was closed......arghh. Rosie was holding her own, at this point, with the help of M0trin and washcloths dipped in ice water.

We came home and after they were both tucked safely into bed I flopped down on a chair thankful that the day was over.

Not an hour later I heard Rosie crying, or so I thought, so I ran up stairs to see her. I found her laying in her bed laughing her head off and pointing at the ceiling. My first reaction was that she was feeling better but then I noticed that she was all sweaty and not making any sense at all. According to her Lily and I were up on her ceiling and it was hilarious. I tried to make her talk to me but she was out of it. Oh joy! I ran back downstairs grabbed the thermometre and took her temp. It was high, (103.9) but not high enough to make her this whacky. Since Jacob was at work and Lily was asleep I decided to do what I could do here at the house. I bought her temp down to 101.8 and she suddenly started making sense again and told me she was cold. Lucky for her cos at this point I was sweating bullets. I kept her glued to my side for a couple or hours and then decided it was ok for us both to go to bed. The child just started to get hotter and hotter until  eventually I was  able to give her more meds and she slept fitfully for the rest of the night.

When my alarm went off this morning I felt like I'd been hit by a truck, it was lashing rain outside and still dark but I was as happy as a clam to know it was a new day.

Lily woke up with her usual happy go lucky outlook on life. I had armed her with a few things to say if she got an flack regarding her scores and she was ready to take on the world as always. Rosie woke up with her fever but it wasn't as high as yesterday so she got to lallygag about while I got ready for work. I hightailed it out of the house at 7.10am with a quick, "call me if the sh*t hits the fan" comment thrown over my shoulder and headed for the sanctuary of my car as I headed to work. There was no way today could replicate yesterday but just in case it tried I was running away.

It was much better. Lily is coping with the disaster that tried to ruin her life yesterday and Rosie still feels like doo doo but I'm sure in a couple more days will be back to her normal self and me, I'm fine cos my Mama heart is still in one piece today.