Fly With Me (a Jonas Brothers adoption story)

Chapter 31- Time for Conferences

Charlotte's POV:

It's Wednesday, and everyone's already gotten up and gone to school.

Dani and I are at home with Valentina and Rowan, who stayed home sick today.

Rowan woke up with a headache, a small fever, and a bit of a cough, so he's staying home to rest.

It's about 10am, Rowan is asleep in his bed, and Valentina is watching TV in the living room, and I'm catching up on some schoolwork at the kitchen table.

I'm starting with reading, which is just finishing the last few chapters of the book we're reading in class, then answering questions, which i don't take too long on, but then comes the math homework. I hate math.

I skip over a couple questions, but i get a majority of the worksheet finished. I can't guarantee it's the right answers, but at least it's filled out.

Once i'm done with some of that, I curl up on the couch and finish watching a movie with Valentina.

Danielle's POV:

I'm at home with Valentina, Charlotte and poor Rowan, who's sick today. I'm about to make some lunch for everyone, but first I go downstairs to check on Rowan.

He's been up all night coughing, keeping up poor Ollie. Ollie had a slight fever this morning too when he told me he had a headache. But it was very low, and after he slept for another hour or so he felt a lot better, and decided that he could go to school. But if the school called me about him, I wouldn't be surprised, as Rowan and Ollie are always with each other and can pass germs around easily.

I walk downstairs past the play room and go into the twins bedroom. Rowan is lying in bed, almost asleep, just wearing some old plaid blue pajama pants, and no shirt.

"Mummaaa" he says, his voice sounding hoarse.

He's so sweet. He was the only one out of our adopted kids who called me momma, but the others were getting there.

"Can you sit up a little bit for me bubba? I'll get you a juice box and some soup, but you have to sit up to have it. I don't want you to spill it all over your bed." I tell him.

Rowan nods lazily.

I help him to sit up, his back propped up on his pillows, his eyes still closed.

I go back upstairs to grab a few things, like a thermometer, a water bottle, a juice box, and a small bag of fruit snacks before putting the soup on the stove and telling Valentina not to touch it.

I make my way back downstairs with my hands full, only to find Rowan laying back down.

He was a bit sweaty, and so I took his temperature again with the thermometer that I brought down. It was a slightly bit higher than it was before, so I made a mental note in my head to bring some fever reducer medicine back down for him later.        
I decided to just let him sleep for now, so I headed back up to make some lunch. I check on Rowan's soup, and made the other kids some sandwiches. I wanted to make something quick and easy, as we have a bit of a busy night. There's parent teacher conferences at the kids school, and right after we're meeting my sister Dina and her daughter for dinner, then Siena is staying overnight, as Dina is going out of town all day tomorrow. Dina is coming by to pick up Charlotte, as she can't go to the conferences with her being suspended, and they're going to do some shopping before we go to dinner.

As soon as I finished making lunch and called the girls to the table to eat, I heard footsteps coming up the stairs.

I turned around seeing Rowan standing with his hands on his knees, bent over and out of breath.

He came over to sit down next to V, and I passed him his bowl of soup.

He didn't eat a whole lot of it, but he curled up on the sofa pretty much all day to watch movies with Valentina, while Charlotte got a bit more schoolwork done and did some chores. Then later, she started to get ready to leave with Dina.
Once Dina was here, we talked for a little bit before Charlotte came back down all dressed and ready to go.
She was wearing a white dress with little yellow flowers along the bottom with a matching yellow cardigan and black flats.

"You got everything you need? Make sure you don't eat too much while you're at the mall, so that you're not full for dinner." I say to Charlotte.

She just nods, knowing what I really meant about her diabetes.

"See you around 6:30! I call out as Dina and Charlotte head out the door, a patiently waiting Siena can be seen from the backseat car window, waving and Rowan and I, who I held in my arms.

"Ready to go pick up the kids?" I asked, seeing as it was nearly 3pm.

He nods and gets down out of my grip to go and get dressed.

I help Valentina with her shoes, then grabbed my jacket, as Rowan came back upstairs in a blue hoodie and khaki shorts.

We got in the car to go and get Lainey, Ollie, and Alena from school, with some random radio station playing softly in the background.

We pull up to the parent pick up line in the circle drive, seeing my 2 oldest kids jump on in the car.

"Where's Ollie?" I ask concerned, wondering why he wasn't with them.

"He had to stay behind to talk to his teacher" Lainey said.

I go into the parking lot to park the car so I could go inside to see what was going on.

Just as I was about to walk into the school, Ollie came out, teary and puffy eyed.

"Ollie? What happened?" I ask him, taking his hand to cross the busy parking lot.

"My teacher wants to talk to you at the conference tonight. I couldn't see the board at writing time and she thinks I need glasses." He said.

"Aw, Ollie that's no reason to be so upset about. A lot of people wear glasses to see Olls." I tell him.

"But I don't want them. Don't tell anybody, okay, Dani? I don't want them to know yet." He says.

"Of course honey, let's go home for a bit. The conferences don't start for another 2 hours." I say as we get in the car.

The kids all make small talk on the way home, but i just try my best to focus on the road in front of me, especially when Alena and Ollie start bickering about who gets the TV when we get home.

"I wanna watch Bluey!" Yells Ollie

"But the new Mermaid movie is on!" Alena explains.

"Mermaids are stupid!" Ollie calls out.

"No they aren't! You're stupid!" Alena says back

"Nuh Uh! No I'm not!" Ollie exclaims.

"Yea you are, and so is that dumb show you always watch all the time!" Alena says.

"Alena Rose and Oliver Joseph that is enough! Both of you say sorry to each other and no one gets the TV when we get home, you are all going to get dressed out of your uniforms into something nice for the conferences and for dinner, and if you keep going on like this, there will be no TV for the rest of the night after." I say as we finally pull into the drive way.

None of the kids said anything and I made sure to check over everyone's outfits as they were getting dressed.

Lainey had on a plain black dress that came just below her knees, as well as a white cardigan and her black flats.

Rowan and Ollie both dressed the same. They were wearing black jeans with little rips on the knees with of course, blue and green stripped shirts.

Alena and Valentina wanted to dress the same too. But Alena wore jeans, and Valentina wore leggings, both in white shirts with ruffles on the sleeves and along the sides. I did Valentina's hair into two pig tails, and help Lainey braid her hair, then we all went right back out the door for conferences.

Oh please let this go well.