She's onto the lot of you

This poor poorly poppet of ours, she is still working the lurgy through. I have been up since 5am listening to her cough to the point of the awful noise that heralds the necessity of a bucket beside the bed, just in case whatever you hear coming up actually... well, comes out. Poor darlin.

While I was lying next to her in an attempt to settle her so she wasn't alarmed by all the kerfuffle from her lungs, she asked me, still in a haze of delirium (for I don't think she was fully awake), "How will I know whose boots are mine?"

"What's that, sweetpea?"

"If someone else has the same boots as me with the flowers all on them.... how do we know which ones are my ones?"

Don't ask me how, but she knows you're all asking about the boots. She's onto the lot of you. But it's okay, we've got it all worked out. We're going to check the size. Because it's hardly likely that if anyone else has her boots, they're going to also have the same size. Sorted.

I wish she would get better, this is the extended cough that just won't simmer down. We're meant to be going to a 5th birthday party this afternoon. There is no WAY I am subjecting her friend, The Birthday Girl, or anyone else to this. So the news broke earlier. Party plan-dashing was declared at 6:16am EST. There was a moment of silence and we bowed our heads over the body. And then the LGBB's face crumpled as what she just heard actually registered in her brain. There would be no fairy dress-ups for her today, no cake, no present for The Birthday Girl.

But perhaps the hardest part of the "punishment" to swallow - ewwwww - is the fact that she caught this cold off another child who should have stayed home. It starts young. How many workplaces have you been in where people come in sick and don't go home and you spend the rest of your day avoiding them and then, when you start to feel that rasp in the back of your throat and your breath feels suddenly hotter in your mouth and then congestion begins, you curse them, don't you?
(Mind you, I think I've encountered more people who stay home at the slightest sniffle when they're hardly ill at all...)

I certainly feel UTTERLY wretched for doing this to my LGBB! It's the first party she's had to miss due to illness. But I'm certain The Birthday Girl's mother, plus the other party goers' parents, will thank me. Even if my child doesn't.