What am I going to do with her?!

Hailey, that is. She sure does keep us on our toes!! I'm not quite sure what to make of her these days...maybe she just has cabin fever and is bored (like the rest of us). Anyway, lately she's had some stomach/intestinal issues. One day, about two weeks ago, she threw up on the bus. She felt sick after lunch (they had cheeseburgers at school that day), went to the nurse and they told her that school was almost over so to just try and stick it out. They didn't know that she has an hour long bus ride home! I dealt with that, told them to call me anytime to come get her even if it's the end of the day because she has such a long busride.She felt fine, but wasn't able to go to school the next day because of the rules. We dont' know what made her get sick, but she was perfectly fine when she got home.

Fast forward one week. Hailey has horseback riding on wednesdays, right after school. I pick her up from school and we go right there. Usually I bring her a snack,because she hasn't eaten anything since lunch. Well, I was in Portsmouth all day with my father and I had forgotten to pack a snack for her so I stopped at a store and got her some Cheese Doodles. Not the healthiest of snacks, but oh well. Everything was fine, until the next day. She woke up early and couldn't stay out of the bathroom. Poor kid, I wasn't going to send her to school if she couldn't stay off the toilet :( So, she stayed home...again.

This week, on tuesday I get a call from the school nurse. Hailey isn't feeling well,has a stomach ache and asked permission to give her Tums. I would never give her tums normally, but hey, if it was going to keep her in school then I was all for it! She had missed so many days already!! The nurse told her that if she wasn't feeling better than to come back and they would give me another call. Well, of course she went back!! So, the nurse told me I should come get her. Again, this was right after lunch at school. I was beginning to see a pattern here. I picked her up, asked her what she ate and everything seemed fine, except that she had chocolate milk. But, she says she has it every day. Hailey IS allergic to whole milk, we think it's the milk fat in it that doesn't agree with her. She can have 2% and below, just not whole milk. So, we decided to cut out milk alltogether from her diet. We thought we had solved the problem!!

She was fine all night. Ate dinner, played, etc. The next morning, she complains of her stomach hurting again. Not like she's going to get sick, but just pain. I believed her, but was reluctant to keep her home AGAIN. She stayed home though. I was going to make a dr's appt. but the roads were really bad and I wanted to wait for it to clear up a bit before I went all the way there. Plus, they were probably going to tell me it was nothing anyway. Well, I never ended up calling the dr. because she definately wasn't feeling sick all day! She wanted to run around an play, she asked to play Dance Dance Revolution, and was eating fine. Every once in a while she would look at me, with "sick" eyes and moan. Then she'd be off playing again. I finally told her that she had to sit on the couch the rest of the day and do nothing other than tv, coloring or read. If you know anything about Hailey, you know that sitting still doing "nothing" is pretty much torture. I can't believe she scammed her own mother...and I believed her!!!!

My first thought was that something is going on at school making her not want to go. I emailed her teacher (I couldn't write her a note like I usually do because Hailey can read pretty much anything at this point) asking if she knew of anything going on. She didn't. We talked on the phone for quite a while and she told me that she hasn't seen anything out of the ordinary. Other than the typical first-grade-girl stuff....getting in trouble for talking in class, who to sit next to, who's going over who's house first, etc. Nothing out of the ordinary. So now we don't know what's going on. Is she really feeling sick? Is she having problems at school? Is she bored as school? We just don't know. Of all my kids, I've never had a "faker" until now. But, then again, maybe she's not faking. My husband thinks she just wants to stay home to be with me....she's just a little attached to me.

This morning she again told me she didn't feel good but she knew she had to go to school. She was all mopey and sad until I told her that I would just make a dr's appointment for her for after school but they probably wouldn't do anything for her. She's been begging me to make an appointment...she's weird and loves the dr's. Once I told her that, it's like a little "I'm all better switch" went off and she was perfectly fine. Did she really just want to go to the dr's this whole time? I have no idea!!? Whatever it is, she definately has issues of some sort that need to get figured out :(

So far, all we've done is start a food journal. EVERYTHING she eats and drinks must go into that journal. Thankfully, her teacher is going to fill it in during the day for me. She is not to drink any milk or eat anything with a lot of milk products in them (pudding, ice cream, yogurt, etc.). So, we'll see if that helps. Plus, we are going to get our water tested at home, to make sure it's not that (she drinks a lot of water). Wish us luck in figuring out our little girls problem :(