God Bless that Ornery Kid

I must say this. As much as Tate's energy and orneriness exhausts and frazzles me sometimes...I sure do miss it when he's sick. I think there's just a fear in me that when he does get sick, that he'll never get better and I should have been more thankful for his ornery ways which meant he was a healthy little boy.

Thursday night he woke up crying so David went and checked on him and discovered he was burning up. He was up a good part of the night but finally fell back asleep for a few hours after the Tylenol kicked in. Yesterday he just wanted to be held and be cuddled (which of course, I enjoyed) but I just hated seeing all his little boy energy zapped from his body and looking into his glassy eyes.

He was burning up with fever and his whole body was shaking so when I finally decided to take my shower late in the day, I tucked him into our bed, under the covers, and he didn't move a muscle. That's not my Tate. My Tate would have thrown the covers off immediately and either started running unsteadily on his little legs around and around the bed, or would have slid off the side and gone to terrorize the dogs or pull things out of my dresser drawers.

Poor little fella.

And the kid who can't seem to shovel food fast enough into his mouth to satiate his seemingly never ending hunger, just pushed his ravioli around on his tray at lunch then reached his arms up to me to take him out of his seat.

His fever foiled our weekend getaway plans to attend Homecoming and David's 10 year college reunion. We never have weekend getaway plans. We are trying to save for two weddings, three colleges, and two cars. (Yes, we are those kinds of parents...my parents paid for all of that for me and I still appreciate the value of a dollar and hard work to earn it.) And I only say two cars, because the kids are close enough in age that we'll probably work something out for them to share a car. Otherwise our driveway will look like a used car lot if there are five cars sitting around. The girls can share til Reese leaves for college (sniff sniff). Then Drue and Tate can share...and I am counting on Drue attending the same college as Reese so they can share again. I know...wishful thinking. One will probably be on the East coast and the other one on the West.

Anyway, I have gotten way off track here. Tate is feeling much better today. He is getting into things again and driving his sisters batty. Hallelujah! Reese drug out the Tinker Toys this morning and for 2 minutes and 27 seconds the kids all played well together on the living room floor. Tate got bored with trying to figure out how the sticks fit together in the wheels, so he turned the cannister upside down and used his sticks to beat on it like a drum. This was distracting to Reese so she shouted, "STOP!".

He paused to look at her, then returned to beating.

"TATE! STOP!."

No reaction this time.

Finally Reese shouted, "STOP! It's your break time!".

That's my healthy, ornery boy...