Sickness in my house

First I got it, then Drew, now Rachel. Altogether we've all been sick since Halloween. Got a call from preschool yesterday to come pick Rachel up; her little forehead was burning up and her voice sounded like a little frog's. She perked up just a bit when we got home, but then said she wanted to cuddle after I took off her dress and told her she could eat dinner in her pajamas (only because she was sick). She fell asleep, completely asleep, leaning against my soft black turtleneck sweater. I fell asleep, too!

Today she was well enough to go back to preschool, but I worked from home just in case her temperature spiked again. She was fine when I picked her up, although she started crying after a friend of hers named Tessa told her not to jump, or yell, I don't remember what it was.

When we got home she wanted to play upstairs, and we decided to build a tower and a prince and princess out of Duplo blocks. When I made my prince say hello to her princess, Rachel burst into tears again and stunned me with what came next: "Your prince is better than my princess!"

What are you supposed to DO at these moments?? I took her in my lap and told her that different people are good at different things, and that she'd discover that she did things better than other people, and that she hadn't even finished building her princess yet, for heaven's sake! We finished both, and they got married and lived happily ever after -- and then we knocked the tower down.

***

Over dinner Rachel got weepy again when I told her she needed to eat big sips of her chicken soup before she was able to get dessert. I took her in my lap again and she explained that Sadie, one of her friends at school, never wants to play with her. "She says, 'I don't want to play with you. I want to play with DEVIN!'" Rachel said sadly.

"Why not ask other kids if they want to play with you?" I replied.

"They all play with each other," she said. "No one wants to play with me."

"How about reading a book?" I said.

"There's nowhere to read," she replied.

We left the issue unresolved, but I had a heavy heart as I tried to soothe her. I thought we were years away from the exclusionary nature of cliques. I had a nightmare of a childhood trying to fit in, and I hope so much that Rachel doesn't experience that.