There Really Was A Wolf This Time (Subtitled: I am a mean mama)

Huck is my darling boy, Myn Lyking,my dear sonne, myn sweeting, but I know him very well. He is manipulative and feels that all is fair in Sickness and Faking. Pardon me if I don't believe him every time he says he's sick.

He will cry and act like he's at death's very door. I have learned to stand beside him the entire time his temp is being taken because I once caught him holding the thermometer against a light bulb. He will claim that there is pain in every cell in his body. He has actually mixed up a concoction of chocolate milk and oatmeal and poured it into the toilet to try to convince me that he hurled.

Believe it or not, he enjoys school, makes excellent grades and is well adjusted, but he will cheerfully swallow a flaming sword if he thinks it will cop him a day at home on the couch watching Spongebob and eating snacks. When I saw his Oscar worthy performance Wednesday evening, complete with tears and limping, I said ( and you have to imagine my Alabama accent with this) "I'll tell you what. I'll send your butt to school pukin' rather than listen to you whine this way."

Well, I didn't send his butt to school pukin', because he woke me up at 4am doing exactly that. I kept him home again today and took him to the doctor. Turns out, he has strep.

Does that turn me into a regretful, guilty mama? No sir! I proceeded to tell him the story of the Little Boy Who Cried Wolf and explain that the reason that I didn't believe that he was sick is because he fakes it. And, yes, I did this on the way home from the doctor, just after his diagnosis.

Of course, when we got home, I completely pampered him and held him in my lap and murmured many "poor baby"s, which probably cancels out my earlier stern demeanor.