Sick Turner

Saturday morning at the breakfast table, while eating special cereal. Cough, cough, sniffle, sniffle…T shirt sleeve comes to his nose.

Over the next three days I offer Turner five tastes of medicine. He refuses them all because they don’t taste good.

Monday I am at school all day. I give the runny, wheezy Turner a breathing treatment and require him to take an entire dose of cough medicine that is pink but not bubble gum and not cherry and not anything that tastes good. He obliges and sucks the liquid down. I scramble around packing sandwich baggies of snacks to get me through six hours of class. In one bag I put “special” cereal (Lucky Charms).

“That for me Mommy?”

“No buddy. That’s a snack for Mommy later while I’m at school.”

“Can I have some special cereal?”
“You already had breakfast. And, today is Monday.”

“I know. Can I have some dry cereal? As a snack, later?”

“Yes. You may. Maybe after your nap.”

“Okay.”

I go upstairs to get my gloves and the rest of my stuff. I pass Chiara in the hallway. When I come back down to the kitchen Turner is seated at the kitchen table, arm deep in a box of Lucky Charms.

“Whatcha doing buddy?” I ask as I pull the box away from a devilish little smile.

“Nothing.”

“Uh. Turner. I asked you.” Chiara looks at me. “He said ‘Mom said I ate a good breakfast so I could have special cereal dry.’”

Intuitive rhetoric. 

Chiara takes him to Build A Bear so they could build a dinosaur, but Turner was not convinced they would have fun. He refused to stay. Perhaps he was concerned about La La Bear’s feelings.

Instead, he wanted a train.

They leave the Build a Bear store and buy a train just like Pa Pa’s. Chiara loves it! I am sure I will too…someday. Turner, of course, really does love it.

Before they leave the mall, Dairy Queen appeared. Chiara asks Turner what he wants. After a quick skim of the pictures, he points to the Oreo Brownie Sundae.

“I want that, without the chocolate.”

“So you just want white ice cream?” Chiara asks.

“Yeah. Without the chocolate.”

At the house and a semi-frustrating building of the train track, Chiara has Turner seated at the kitchen table. His medicine from the morning is wearing off. His eye lids are flapping together in total fatigue.

“What do you want for lunch?”

“Couscous.”

“I don’t know what that is.”

“Yes you do. It’s the white stuff.”

“Well, I’m not Mommy. I can’t make the things that Mommy makes. I can make a grilled cheese, hotdog.”

“I’ll take a cheesestick.”

Done. Then, a nap that lasted close to three hours. Play time infecting the little girls next door with snotty noses and hacking coughs.

Turner’s fever broke at midnight. He was up at 7 refreshed and like a new little boy. I get out of the shower and hear him screaming at his train, “On the boooooard!” (all aboard.)