His pediatrician, whom I absolutely adore, looked him over, listened to his chest, checked in his ears -- the usual.

The verdict: "Well, his ears look fine, and his chest sounds OK, so I'm hopeful that he won't need an antibiotic to go over this."

Normally, Daddy picks her and Noah up from the sitter's house and takes them home, and then he and Sam get the mail. But on Wednesday, I picked the kiddos up because my husband had 10-hour training in Lebanon and then a three-hour night class in Harrisburg (yeah, so glad I wasn't him yesterday).

Yum.

Know why I had to wait until 2 o'clock? Because I told Sam this morning that we don't have dessert after breakfast.

She had quite an incentive to get them, too: Daddy said no TV until she had five green days in a row.

I'll admit, I thought five days was too many, especially since it wasn't as though we had been dealing with her having a behavior issue for months. Plus, that meant we had to go all of this past weekend with Sam not getting any TV time

(*note: I will not be blogging about those 48 hours. I share many things on here, but I'm afraid to share the fact of how many times I almost caved in and flicked on an episode of SpongeBob for 22 solid minutes of peace.)

The day before the run-in, I had found him on the floor in our living room, home phone in hand, gurgling gleefully as all the buttons lit up and a woman's voice said in a loud monotone: "If you'd like to make a call ..."

So when I plunked him down on the floor the following day, I was prepared: I propped a pillow up in front of the phone, thinking he'd never remember it was there.

Sometimes my naivete annoys even me.

Just some sort of little handbag that draws comments like, "Ooooh, that's so cute! Where did you get that?" from other women.

Sadly, this is an impossibility. I have finally admitted it to myself.

The relief: She's staying in morning kindergarten (insert mental picture of me dancing here -- or don't, if you're trying to eat right now).

The frustration: Sam had another "yellow" day yesterday.

She's gotten herself into a routine, which for Sam is a requisite for functioning without tears. She likes repetition. She likes knowing what will happen today, and tomorrow, and the day after -- even if she still hasn't grasped those time concepts yet.

Like now, every morning, while we wait at the bus stop, she and her two newest best friends in the world pick flowers for their mommies and their teachers. One morning, Jaylen sent her daddy home with a veritable bouquet of wildflowers.

And then I got a note from school saying our whole happy routine could change.

The part I find funny is that he's not yet sure which things are appropriate to wave bye-bye to.

Day No. 4, by the way, was a hodge-podge of Days No. 1, 2 and 3.

Sam didn't want to go to school, we talked about it, and I discovered she doesn't like the fact that she doesn't know exactly what they'll be doing each day. She didn't want to talk to her teacher about it, so I offered to do that.

Her eyes got really wide when I offered, and she said, "You would do that?"

So I drove her to school, talked to the teacher for, like, 20 seconds, and left without kissing Sam good-bye because she was already having a great time sitting with one of her new friends.

The best thing she said this morning in trying to weasel her way out of school? "But Mom, I'm just going to school too much!"

Nice try, sweetie pie.

She tried to pull the "Mom, I just don't wanna go to school cuz I'm afraid I'm going to miss you" (here comes my favorite part) "very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, VERY, very, very much."

So I pulled her against me, held her as tightly as should would allow, and told her I would miss her very, very, very, very, very, very, VERY much, too. "But," I said, "if you're at school and realize you miss me, all you have to do is tell Mrs. Bangert, and she will help you. She knows how to help kids who miss their mommies."

And then I said, "Hey -- aren't you missing 'The Little Mermaid'?" (which I put on this morning to help distract her) And her eyes lit up and she sprinted off.

And cried. And flailed herself around. And cried some more.

She begged me not to make her go to school again. She told me she would miss me too much and she just wanted to stay home with me all the time.

And I dragged her butt there.

It's 1:15 p.m., and my peanut made it. Her first-ever day of school is done, and she is safely at the sitter's house.

Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh.

Oh man, I hope I filled out the form to have her dropped off there correctly. The postcard they sent me last week did list the sitter's address as her drop-off point, right? Why can't I picture that clearly in my head? I should have quintuple-checked it.

And did I talk to Sam enough times about the fact that the bus will take her to the sitter's house and not our house?

What if her teacher didn't notice that she will take a different bus home and she was accidentally put on the bus to go back to our house? I just now realized that I forgot to put a tag in her bookbag identifying her and her address and my daytime phone number. Obviously, she knows her name and her address and our home phone number, but she doesn't have my work or cell numbers memorized.

*deep breath*

I already made sure I could call the sitter's house around 1 o'clock to talk to Sam and see how everything went.

Only 45 more minutes.

I can do this.