Translation: "Do you like 'seafood'?"

It’s never a good thing when the phone rings, and the Caller ID is the preschool where your 4 year old goes for 3 lovely mornings a week.

‘Lovely’ because she LOVES school and her teacher and her little pals… but also ‘lovely’ because three mornings a week, my house is quiet. Seriously quiet. Except for the squeaking of the guinea pigs, and CNN in the background, my house is blissfully quiet.

And on these lovely mornings, I usually find myself cleaning up the breakfast mess, mopping the floor, or spraying Oxy-Clean on the dirty laundry… (glaaaamorous!) So when the phone rang, and it was the preschool teacher telling me that Libby had thrown up at school, I surveyed the recently picked up house, which was certain to not stay that way for long, and retrieved the Oxy-Clean out of the laundry cabinet, which was certain to be needed for whatever I had sent Libby to school in that morning.

I asked the typical questions on the phone:
1) Does she have a fever? …No.
2) Had she been coughing? *I know from experience that the allergy cough can bring on the ‘gaggies’ in my kids.* …But no.
3) Do I need to bring a change of clothes to school, so she can ride home in the van without ME gagging all the way home? …Surprisingly, no. (The teacher said she had very good aim.)

So I grabbed a bucket out of the garage… the one we use to wash the cars when they get so grungy that entire stanzas of poetry could be written on the back window… ‘Ode to a Filthy Van’… put the bucket in the van (I wasn’t taking any chances!)… and made my way to preschool to pick up the little puker.

When I got there, Libby was in the school office with the director, coloring a picture, and she looked… well, she looked suspiciously fine. Not that I WANT any of my kids to be sick, mind you, but she was actually humming a little tune, picking out different crayons. My ‘sick kid’ radar clicked off, and my ‘suspicious mommy’ antennae went up…

I leaned down next to her, felt her head (doncha’ know that Mommy’s fever detecting hands work sooo much better than a lousy thermometer?), but, nope, no fever. I asked her, “Libby, honey, do you feel bad?” And she said, “Yeeeah,” and then… she smirked. Just a little. But enough that I could tell she was trying not to smile.

So we headed home, and on the way, I asked her why she’d gotten sick. Her answer?

Somebody was chewing their peanut butter and jelly sandwich with their mouth open, and smacking their lips. Omigod. Now I know that she doesn’t like PB&J, and she refuses to eat peanut butter…but when she got a glimpse of her friend’s ‘see-food’, she lost her own lunch.

I was completely flummoxed. I told her that next time, she should just look the other way, and not watch her friend chew.

Translation: ‘I will NOT be picking you up from school every time someone has something ‘gross’ in their lunch, you little diva.’

Her response… “But, Mommy, I will still be able to SMELL it!”

Translation: “Duuuh, Mom!”

A couple of friends pointed out to me that we had lucked out that Davis has not discovered this chink in his little sister’s armor. Can’t you just picture it? “Chewing a peanut butter sandwich with my mouth open?!! Really?! That’s all it takes? Sweeeeeet.”

Translation: “Mom, get the Oxy-Clean.”