Last Friday Russell ended up missing school because he seemed kind of sick that morning and said he wanted to stay home and pack for our weekend trip because he was getting a cold, but an hour or two later, he seemed perfectly healthy and he had a great weekend. My best guess is he was just tired and may have had a headache, and that he was too focused on the weekend trip to want to switch gears for school.
This morning, he coughed a few times as he was waking up. I wasn't sure if it was the start of a cold (there are a few going around) or just waking up sounds. I tried to explain to him that if he was coughing from sickness, we'd have to have him stay home so other kids wouldn't get sick. He wanted to go to school and made his case in his inimitable Russell way:
"The cough sends the cold and the headache out of my body and it goes FAR AWAY into the woods and will never come back."
"Well, Russell, I hope you're right or that you don't have a cold," I said, "but if it is a cold, it will need more time than that to leave your body."
"This cold is VERY FAST. It goes at twenty miles per hour!"
Not long after that, I decided he was pretty much his usual self (see above) and, again, probably sleepy instead of sick. (Though, this being the start of the preschool year, I'm sure he'll be sick soon regardless.) He went to school and had a good time. We both really like Teacher Jory, his new teacher, and it is such a nice bunch of families at the school.