Swift Recovery

Children, when they are ill, amaze me!

No, that doesn't mean I enjoy seeing them sick -most definitely not. But I do have to smile, sometimes even laugh aloud at the antics they will pull to try to get out of things, or around stuff, under the guise of an illness or an injury.

Right now, Miss Maya is slightly ill. She does have a dry cough that started Sunday night and isn't improving either. The lack of improvement though, I firmly believe, has to do a lot with the fact that she doesn't want to take any of the cough medicine that Mandy has for her and proclaims too that she can't take any cough drops either because -well, they are yucky. Sorry for your luck child, but you keep this up and you'll be enjoying this cough from now until spring arrives and then some most likely. Mandy did finally get her to take some cough medicine, the amount of which in the little dosage cup came to less that the amount of wine she gets in church every Sunday now that she takes communion. She was protesting swallowing that big amount of cough syrup though until I pointed out to her that it looks like the wine, is a smaller amount than the wine and she could just pretend she is taking communion then at home. Why that logic on my part apparently appealed to her, I really don't know, but it did and I'm not arguing with it.

Now though, she's maybe feeling a notch better because after Mandy left to go to work tonight -it's her 2-hour shift this evening -Maya knew she had homework to do and was all nice-nice about discussing it before her Mom left but within 10 minutes or so, she was making very strident statements to me about NOT doing her homework. So at the moment, I am currently biting my tongue so as to not give her any more things about which she could and would use to dig in her heels and argue more with me other than to remind her that if the homework is not done when Mommy gets back home, she'd better be prepared to get with the program in a hurry and get it done then!

However, she is going to be a bit upset when Kurtis gets a snack/treat here shortly because he did all his homework earlier when Miss Dawn, his TSS, was here, plus he ate all his dinner too. Maya did eat all her supper but the homework thing is there, doing the "heavy, heavy, hangs overhead" thing and when that comes crashing down on her as she gets no treat/snack before bedtime... Well, we'll see how smug she is then, I guess.

It is funny though some of the things kids do, the comments they make from time to time, isn't it?

Take this past Sunday in church when Pastor Carrie was doing the regular announcements for the week, prior to the beginning of the service and this week, she announced that anyone who didn't have any plans immediately after church, if they would be able and willing to stay and help out, they would be most welcome as help was needed to de-trim the church and remove the trees from the holidays. Upon hearing that, Kurtis called out to her that he would "Help because I'm real, real, really strong, ya know!" Thankfully, he and Maya were involved after church with their own Sunday School classes so his brand of help wasn't quite needed but sure is nice to hear him volunteer his services this early on in life. Now, if only that motivation will stay with him during the teen years and well beyond that as an adult!

This evening though, he and Miss Dawn had a bit of a difference of opinion and he kept disobeying what she had told him until finally, her patience ran out and she grumbled, a bit more than her normal correctional voice level and he became quite hurt and upset. About that time too, supper was ready and he came to the table still whining and whimpering about having been reprimanded. When I asked him what his problem was he told us that what Miss Dawn had said had "Hurts my heart." You know, it's more than a little difficult to explain things in a straight-forward manner when deep inside you just want to laugh out loud at his expressions!

So now, the time has come for me to end this little post and go dip a bit of chocolate ice cream into a small bowl and make Kurt's day complete. I had no idea that chocolate had so many healing qualities until seeing Kurtis recover virtually immediately from a myriad of illnesses and injuries simply by our offering him a scoop of chocolate ice cream or a cup of chocolate milk.

Of course, I should have realized it was a potion that great because I do know what a smuggled bite of chocolate candy will always do for me.

Definitely puts a smile on my face and a little lighter step to my walk too. Well at least until the pounds start piling back on anyway.