The Great Pretender

I know some of you are anticipating this post being about Obama from the title, but it's not - sorry.  Nope, this post is about my strong-willed child. The second one. Evan.  You see, he has two major obstacles in his strong-willed way.  The first, is that his Daddy was a strong-willed child and used to play the crying game to get out of stuff, too. So, I know those tricks.  The second is that, although Evan is strong-willed, I am stronger-willed.  Poor kid doesn't stand a chance.  Which is why, after several days of his attempts to manipulate situations in his favor, today was a blow to his scheming ways.

He'd been complaining at bedtime for a couple of nights that his throat hurt.  The complaint only came as he was being tucked in and wanted to sleep in our room.  I simply had him sip water and go to sleep.  Two nights ago, he decided to push the envelope and intentionally wet his bed (which we suspected and he admitted upon interrogation).  Luckily for him at that time, I was in the shower and his mom changed his sheets and clothes and returned him to bed. (I would have let him lie there in his wet glory for half an hour before the change)  Today, I was contacted before noon by the daycare to inform me that Evan had been crying and complaining of a sore throat, hadn't eaten lunch and complained he couldn't sleep at the onset of nap time.  (I know, right? - NAPTIME before NOON?!)  Anyway, I approved giving him some Ibuprofen and proceeded to pick him up early.  Once I checked him out, he quickly perked up!  "How are you feeling, Evan?"  "I feel better now!  Can we go eat somewhere?"  "Sure, we can go eat a sandwich at home."  "But I wanna GO somewhere."  "We ARE going somewhere, son. We're going to the doctor's office."  "WHAT? WHY?!"  "Because you said you were sick and couldn't eat or sleep because of it."  "But I'm not sick anymore - I was only sick at Fisher's (daycare)"

Ahhh... See, what he didn't know was that I suspected this before I picked him up.  (Remember those "good times", Mom?)  I did want to eliminate the outside possibility that any real irritation could be more than his seasonal allergies, so we went to the clinic and had him checked out. The doctor noted some mild post-nasal drainage and possibility of minor throat irritation.  At her offer, I approved a strep test just to be sure and it was negative.  During the visit, as Evan was concerned about getting a shot (I got my co-pay's worth out of this), he confessed that he'd said his throat hurt worse than it did because he didn't like what they were having for lunch and their naptime is too long.  Really.  So, when we left the doctor's office, we did NOT go eat out.  No, we went home, ate a plain, boring sandwich and then he had to take a nap.  A long one.  In fact, I had a hard time waking him up 2-1/2 hours later!

We'll see how much he learned tomorrow...