Reminds me of the time I though my then 6yro was faking a headache, until I pushed back his bangs a noted a giant goose egg/bruise. Yeah. Sorry for your shit day, love. Hope it's not strep also.

Oh Amy...my Mother of the Year award is somewhat tarnished too. I had the same school nurse conversations about both kids (slow learner I am). Husband went one time to school to deal with son's vague symptoms and we ended up deep cleaning company car, due to projectile "fake symptoms due to math test" or so we thought. He was home with flu and ear infection and cold for a week. Then the rest of us got it. Yep....really should have had that award recalled.

Oof. I think we've all been there one way or another--when all the balls we normally juggle just fine fall on our heads. Hang in there, and I hope Noah feels better soon.

Yeah, I totally ignored the strep symptoms until it became full-blown scarlet fever. I even accused my husband of letting him get a sunburn until I realized it was a rash from the strep. It was a big Mom-fail day.

Sounds like you're feeling rough for lots of reasons so I'm chiming in to say that of all the blogs I follow, yours is the last good one. Seriously all of the rest of them are wastelands of links to babble slide shows of boring top ten lists about their cats or some sponsored shit. You're the only one that seems to have respect for her readers anymore! Even when you were on babble and when you do write sponsored posts, it's not all you do. It sounds like you do so much on top of this blog, and yet you prioritize this space. I appreciate it! You do good work and I really enjoy reading what you write! :)

Puh-leeze! Here's a normal conversation in my classroom.
9:00 AM: 'Teacher, I don't feel good.'
'Did you tell your mom/dad/grandma that this morning?'
'Yes'
'What did they say?'
'I needed to try to stay at school today.'
' Did they give you medicine?'
'Yes.'
' Well sweetie, you're here for another 4 hours.'
In our district, parents are required to pick up their kids only if they're vomiting or have a fever above 99.6. So desperate/devious parents dose their kids with Tylenol to suppress the fever and send them to school. So my long-winded point is that you were ignorant not malicious. There. You feel better now, don't you?

So yeah. My kid walked around with a broken arm for 2 days before I took her to get it checked out. Mom of the year, right here.

You aren't horrible for two reasons:

Reason the first: being an excessively pale person who was once an excessively pale child, the "but he's just so pale" thing is TOTALLY easy to fake and I used to have my school nurses number like woah in school

Reason the second: Because of this my mom instituted a NO FUN policy no matter what. If you were home "sick" you were in bed, if you were really sick then that's where you should be, if you weren't well then maybe rethink the whole staying home thing. Now granted I got around this with books and such because my dad was a soft-hearted sucker BUT it was totally a good idea in theory and did make me really reconsider faking as I got older and harder to entertain.

And a bonus you aren't horrible: my sister, who is not pale at all, always faked by complaining of non specific aches (i.e. I can't do chores my ankle hurts) and because of this walked around with a hairline fracture for like 2 weeks. Soo yeah, that pretty much cured her of faking because it actually hurt and took forever to get anyone to pay attention too.

Anywho, not horrible, just suspicious as you probably should be because kids are horrible con artists

Monitor the stomach aches. My son had them when he was on meds. They are a definite side effect. I too thought that he was exaggerating but they went away when he stopped ritalin.

Kids are freaky like that. A month ago, Lily said she wasn't feeling well. I didn't believe her, because she also said she just wanted to go see Grandpa and watch Paw Patrol. Then she went skipping down the hall. So NOPE. I dropped her off at school. I had just gotten home when the school called. Lily had thrown up everywhere and now had a fever. Could I come get her? Also, she didn't have any spare clothes so she had to borrow an outfit from a child who actually had a competent mother who remembered to do things like bring spare clothes and whatnot.

I felt like shit. They had to steam clean the carpet.

Also, if I had a dollar for every time the kids were perfectly okay by the time we got to the doctor's office, in spite of looking like regurgitated death half an hour before at home, I would be in Donald Trump's tax bracket.

Kinda love this post, kid. Also, our family lore is the time my granny sent my uncle to school w/ the mumps. "You're fine!" lol. Get well soon, Noah.

I second what Debbie said; I LOVE your blog and I love your writing style. I wish I had a friend as irreverant and grounded as you in my life. Go grab some booze and binge watch Game of Thrones until you feel better.

I second (third? fifth? nth?) the rule of "If you're too sick for school, you're too sick for play." (And that includes all forms of play, i.e., electronic devices.) It worked for my mom. My options, if I stayed home sick, were to lay in bed and sleep. (If I was actually, verifiably sick, she would pull out some entertainment for me, but otherwise...nuh-uh.) It certainly put the kibosh on my trying to fake being sick as a kid...right up until my teen years when I regularly stayed up half the night anyway and didn't want to wake up for school...then I was thrilled to just sleep all damn day!