Friday night my son came to our room to tell me his stomach hurt. Then he threw up on the floor.  He's ten, and it always happens this way.  (At least he manages to get downstairs, where the floors are wood instead of carpet.)  This time, it was a tummy bug.  (Other times it's been too many hotdogs.)  And since he'd eaten blueberries with dinner, what came out was alarmingly like red/maroon syrup.  At first I thought it was blood and sort of freaked out.  Why do digested blueberries turn that color?  That's one question.

 I'm also wondering what the tummy bug weather/exertion rules might be.  Because by Monday he was feeling better.  But he'd had a fever Sunday night and hadn't consumed anything but Gatorade since Friday.  So when he wanted to go out and play, I limited his snow time to twenty minutes.  This sounded cautious and reasonable.  But when he asked, "Why can't I stay out longer?  Will the tummy bug come back?"  I had no idea.  Can extreme weather/too much early exertion contribute to a relapse of fever, weakness, or vomiting?  Or would it have been alright to let him do as much as he felt able?  We compromised with a longer outdoor playtime later in the day, after he'd had some food and kept it down.