My Daughter Had Frosted Flakes & Lemonade for Dinner

I was sick yesterday. Not deathly ill. Not bleeding or broken bones. Just run-of-the-mill sick - low grade fever and an awful stomach ache and so exhausted that other than the bare minimum I couldn't bring myself to get out of bed.

I took my daughter to camp - came home and crawled into bed. 5 hours and 45 minutes later I crawled out of bed and picked my daughter up from camp.

We came home from camp and I tried my hardest to seem perky and pleasant and make conversation. Then Allie asked me if I would play a game with her. I felt soooo guilty because I had to say no as the thought of being a part of the world for one more minute was making me even more ill. So, I tell Allie, "Mommy doesn't feel well and I need to lay down for 5 minutes." Allie asks if she can watch iCarly. I told her yes and to wake me up when its over.

That was at 4pm on Friday.

I didn't see Allie again till both of us woke up this morning at 8am.

When she came in to wake me, I saw it was light outside and asked her if iCarly was over. Allie said, "Mommy, iCarly was on yesterday". I did a double take and saw my husband was sleeping in bed (totally don't remember him coming home) and I wondered what in the world happened to the last 16 hours of my life and began to question what did Allie do, who took care of her? when did my husband come home? Did she eat dinner? What did she have? And then I felt so guilty because I didn't know any answer to any of those questions.

After peppering Allie with millions of questions, she simply looks at me and tells me that she didn't want to wake me because I was sick and so she took the house phone and cell phone with her into her playroom in case anyone called. She said she made her own dinner - frosted flakes and lemonade and Daddy put her to bed when he got home from work.

I'm completely torn between feeling extremely guilty that I felt so awful yesterday that my child had no adult taking care of her and playing with her and giving her attention from the time we got home from camp until Daddy came home and feeling extremely proud of her for getting the fact that Mommy was sick and she needed to figure out a way to entertain herself. I was just hoping for 22 minutes of nothing while iCarly was on - I didn't expect her to make her own dinner too! And hey, who's to say that frosted flakes and lemonade would be any worse than what I would have made her with a fever of 100 and feeling crappy?