Ferris Bueller's Day Off

This picture was taken almost a year ago by my sister-in-law Jen. This is how Franny looks when she's pretending to be sick.

Friday morning at 5:45 Miss Franny walks into my room and says cheerfully, "Good morning, Mom!"

I manage a "good morning, sweetheart" in reply and ask her if she'd like to watch cartoons until Mommy's ready to face the day. Happily she runs off into the family room to get cozy on the couch with a blanket with some Disney channel entertainment. She usually isn't up quite this early, but a little early morning TV-watching is pretty normal in this house.

Around 7:15, I emerge from my room and nudge both girls (Sophie has joined Franny on the couch) for some cereal. They eat breakfast and everything about this day so far is fairly normal, aside from getting up 1/2 an hour too early. So I'm surprised when at 7:30 we start heading to the girls' room to get dressed and Franny tells me she is cold and wants to go to sleep. First I tell her we can get her warm school clothes on. She replies that she wants to get in bed. This reminds me of something that happened earlier in the week. We were babysitting our little friend Jack and he felt really cold and wrapped himself up in a blanket. A few hours later, he was sick with a fever. So even though everything seemed to appear normal with Franny, I decided to listen to what she was saying and let her get back into bed. Sure enough, a few hours later, she was running a fever.

I can't tell you how cool it is that she was able to tell me she was sick! Ha ha! Isn't it funny the things we celebrate with our kids? But this was a major breakthrough. I mean, there have been several times when I've sent her to school only to get a call a few hours later: "Mrs. Fields, Franny's been acting really tired all day. Her face is flushed. I think you better come pick her up." It feels like such a triumph to have her just tell me, "Mom? I'm cold. I want to go to bed." I'm so proud of her.