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When the phone rang at 6 AM, I knew I wasn’t going to be an early-bird with this week’s Small Success. It was one of the second-grade teachers, asking if I could sub today. Sure! No problem! I even bribed Little Brother to wake up a few minutes early by offering to buy him a hoagie, since I had nothing in the house that I could take to school for my lunch (I was planning on a quesadilla, but I can’t fry one of those in the faculty room.) Hoagies in hand, we made it to school on time.

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The second-graders and I were having a pretty good morning. We even weathered the lockdown drill where we had to go to another classroom because I had no keys to the one I was in. I’d gotten the two boys with “issues” settled down; one of them was finally following along with the reading, and the other one was calming down. That no-nonsense approach following an unfortunate armpit-fart episode did the trick. Clearly the child had no idea that, being the mom of two boys who have been second-graders in the past, I am no stranger to dealing with armpit farts.

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At 9:55 the phone rang, as I’d expected it would, because that’s when Little Brother goes to the nurse to test his blood sugar. But the nurse was letting me know that his sugar AND his temperature were high. I had to take him home. The school was more than gracious about finding a substitute for the substitute, and we were out the door in under half an hour after the changing of the guard in second grade. I pulled a tub of chicken-noodle-soup starter from the freezer (homemade broth, carrots and celery. Just defrost and add pastina) and got some ice water ready for Little Brother. 3 cheers for being prepared with that!

I’m suspecting it’s strep, since Middle Sister had it last week, but we have to wait a little while before we can find out for sure. The sore throat hasn’t manifested itself yet, but he’s got a headache and stomachache. In the meantime, I’m sending Middle Sister to the store after school for sugar-free Jell-O and popsicles.

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I am keeping my cool (mostly) while dealing with a grumpy kid. I’m kind of glad he’s grumpy, because I’ve seen him sick enough to stop being grumpy, and I really don’t want to have to go there again.

Here’s to good health all around by next week’s Small Success! Visit CatholicMom.com to share your successes, large and small, and see what the rest of the Small Success crew has been up to this week.