Wednesday/Thursday at midnight DS3 woke up at midnight with a fever. No other symptoms. No covid exposures that I know of. (He does go to preschool but their positive covid numbers have miraculously been pretty low so far. I think only one or two kids out of 100+ in both AM and PM and that's since August.) Out of an abundance of caution, I kept all 3 boys home from school that day because if he did get other symptoms I didn't want to send the older kids to elementary school to expose everyone else. DS3 didn't have fever again since mid morning Thurs and was fine all day, no other covid symptoms, no one else sick, so we sent DS1 and DS2 back to school on Friday. (Our community numbers overall are really high but the district doesn't care. We did opt for in person for a variety of complicated reasons.)

We've made it since August with only one email "someone in your kid's class but not a close contact" and DS1's teacher quarantined for 2 weeks where he had a different sub every day. So I'd considered it going pretty well but knew the bottom would probably fall out after Thanksgiving break.

Sure enough, today I get a call to pick up DS1 because someone he is a close contact with (the kid who sits across from him in their "pod", has covid, last exposed *Friday*.) OF COURSE the kid who loves school and cried to be signed out is the kid who is now quarantined. And it's going to make it 100x harder to get DS2 to school because every day he wakes up asking how many more days until weekend and now he knows his brother gets to stay home for the next 2 weeks. And if I hadn't sent them Friday his last contact would have been Wednesday and probably prior to the sick kid being symptomatic. (DS1 says sick kid left school early Friday so I'm assuming didn't feel well or something..) Also, the district and health dept etc. all say it's FINE to keep sending DS2 and DS3 to school as long as no one has no symptoms (so far so good), I still feel guilty about it, but yeesh. DS2 needs to be in school, he just got his IEP for reading/writing last week after a 3 month ordeal, and DS3 is the biggest busybody and NEEDS to be in preschool as much as he can. On the bright side, the best/easiest kid to be quarantined is DS1 because he can stay home by himself for a bit, is pretty content to just stay in his room, minimal academic concerns so it's not going to be too miserable having him home.

I just wanted to whine that this sucks and I am over 2020. I know it could be so much worse and I'm thankful it isn't, but geez, we were sooo close.