I'm writing this from the bed next to Liam's bed, as the world's best little sick person restlessly sleeps and moans under the blanket of fever and chills. When he first came down sick on Friday morning I thought it'd be short-lived. We had a whole Brendan's 4th birthday and Halloween weekend extravaganza planned. Friday was Brendan's birthday. After their alarm went off the boys came into our bed, like they usually do, but Liam seemed uncharacteristically fussy. Eric said he got up with him a couple hours earlier and he had a 102 degree fever. He went back to his bed and the rest of us went downstairs to see Brendan's birthday balloons and open his presents. He brought them upstairs so he could open then with Liam.
That morning I was going to Liam's kindergarten class with another mom to do a presentation about the artist Horace Pippin. I was so bummed Liam couldn't be there, but it was fun to be in his classroom and see all the little kids. It has a much warmer feel than the preschool he and Brendan go to. And his teacher is excellent. (So is their preschool teacher, but they are very, very different people, as the schools are very very different schools.) She's a 23 year old DePaul graduate and is doing a great job keeping 18 kindergartners engaged and behaved for 3 hours every morning. I have to get a picture of her and Liam. Anyway, I texted the other mom, Stephanie, to say I'd be there at 8:25. She didn't respond, and it turns out she thought the presentation was at 10:30 so she missed the whole thing. I'll give myself a pat on the back for doing what I think was a great job when the whole thing went off-script. It was fun. The next plan was that I'd get home in time for Eric to take the 9:27 train into work. Then around 2:30 I was going to rustle up the boys into the car and take them down to Orbitz for their office Halloween trick-or-treating. But since Liam wasn't going to be able to go, Eric worked from home and brought just Brendan to work later in the afternoon. Liam still had a fever but he seemed relatively ok.
I wasn't sure if Eric and Brendan would be back in time for dinner, and Liam wasn't super hungry, so we ordered Jimmy Johns (though I'm not in favor of giving him too much money after his political antics.) We had to cancel the rest of the plans (which included going to Ed Debevics for Brendan's birthday dinner and then going to the Marriott overnight.) I knew when Liam didn't eat more than two bites of his sandwich that he was pretty sick. Sure enough that was Friday night and now it's Sunday afternoon and he hasn't eaten anything in all that time. He's just barely able to drink water and the occasional sips of juice. We considered taking him to the hospital this morning as he was starting to show some signs of dehydration, but we've been able to get that under control at least for now.
Today was his last soccer game and the Halloween party at his school. Brendan and Aidan are there now with Eric, and obviously we missed the game. I know Liam doesn't have too many expectations about what we should be doing this weekend, but I'm so sad for him to miss his class Halloween party tomorrow and trick-or-treating. To top it off he's completely Ferris Bueller when he's sick. Totally sweet and pathetic and it's heartbreaking.
