My tiny teenager goes to high school

I have been missing a lot of work lately due to my kids and their disappointing immune systems. About a month ago, Jack ended up having to come to school with me for 1st period because his daycare refused to admit him (apparently, if you get sent home for diarrhea you can bring your child back the following day, but if it happens again they will deny admittance). My students in my 1st class acted as though they had never seen a small child before. They kept trying to pick him up and Jack kept trying to crawl back into my uterus. I went home that day and was telling Tom all about it when suddenly Ellie perked up and started insisting that I take her to school, too. She then continued to ask me every other day if she could come to school with me. Well, today, her wish was granted. She woke up this morning crying because her head hurt so bad. Ellie has an unusually high pain threshold, so I knew she was serious, but I gave her Advil and proceeded to get the kids ready for school anyway. As we were walking out the door, she started vomiting. "See, I TOLD you I was sick, Mommy!" With such short notice, I had no choice but to take Ellie to school with me while typed up a lesson plan and waited for the sub to show. My 1st period was again overjoyed to see another small human, but this time they had someone eager to accept their advances. First, she wrote "boys" on the chalkboard and put a frowny face next to it and then wrote "girls" with a smiley face. My students loved this. Then, she drew pictures of Christmas trees and candy canes for all the girls (smiley face!) in my class. I tried to warn my students that she was sick, but they still insisted on hugging her and sitting next to her. Clearly, we got a lot accomplished. When it was time for us to leave, Ellie (who had miraculously recovered from her mystery illness) started begging to stay at school and meet all my students. I have always felt like Ellie is a teenager masquerading as a 5 year old and her total comfort in the high school setting just proves my point.