I just finished cleaning the baby's booster chair. Some BONEHEAD designer designed it with about 2000 nooks and crannies, each of which can harbor a week's worth of discarded food that will fester and ripen to an alarming stench in no time at all. Especially when one's child does not so much eat food as tuck it under his bottom. Then some BONEHEAD novice parents bought it for their first child and couldn't bear, in their silly frugal way, to discard it and have been cursing it ever since. So this parent in particular feels she deserves a little blog break before she goes to freeze some kale and grind some wheat for her daily bread.
So the kids were all playing happily in the playhouse earlier this week while I worked in the garden. Suddenly M began to scream in her usual histrionic way that "there was a bee on my hand! there was a bee on my hand!" Well, I say her usual histrionic way, but there was in fact a true sense of urgency in her scream. I asked her over and over, "did it sting you? Did it sting you?" She didn't know, and after a few moments of back-and-forth I realized that this was not helping the situation at all and that if she was still screaming she probably had been bitten. Which she had. Stung twice on the wrist by a wasp or wasps. Ouch. So the usual remedies were applied (baking soda, frozen peas, hydrocortisone cream, kisses, lying on the couch) and the brave mama went out to investigate, trailed by two not so brave as curious and reckless boys.
I opened the door to the sink of the playhouse and saw what looked like a basketball-sized wasp nest (my skin is crawling right now as I think about it). Wasps started buzzing and whizzing around, so I picked up the baby and hustled the toddler into the house pronto.
Now, I do not believe in applying poisons all over the home for no good reason. E lectured her class about the evils of fertilizer in preschool, thanks to my evangelizing. To spiders, I say live and let live. BUT when you sting my baby, you forfeit your rights (let's not even talk about what happens when you hit my baby on the head with a baseball bat), and I keep a secret can of wasp spray in the garage for just such an occasion. So I dispatched the nest and the wasps with rapid if not entirely eco-friendly efficiency. (And when I went to remove the nest saw that it was not quite as big as a basketball but probably the size of my fist nevertheless.)
So poor M, the very next day, came running to me from riding her bike, screaming this time about a spider. On her hand. Once again, the dumb question, "did it bite you?" This time she was sure it hadn't, but while I was trying to calm her down she realized it was crawling on her leg, so she screamed some more, shook it off, and ran inside. I have to admit, it was pretty big and hairy. (We have these big hairy spiders living in our air ducts--we looked them up, and they are harmless Daring Jumping Spiders, a name you have to love.) Well, that was just too much for M. She spent the next two hours lying motionless on the couch, staring at the ceiling, no doubt thinking evil thoughts about bugs.
She is recovering nicely.
2 comments:
At least your kids have a reason to be scared of bugs. Andrew goes around the house freaking out because there are flies in the windows!! As for the booster chair... we bought TWO of those fold-up boosters that seemed so clever - until I had to clean them. If I'm ever in the market again, I'm getting a molded plastic seat - not adjustable, just a plain seat (Target used to sell them). By the way, I loved seeing you at the park - it was so great to catch up!
Johanna--
Loved loved loved seeing you and kids at the park, too. I'm glad to hear there are parents out there as dumb as (or maybe dumber than???) we are in re the booster chair. I've decided if I have just ONE more child I'm going for the all-one-piece variety. But then I wonder why one more (at this point hypothetical) child would merit a new booster seat and our making-a-mess-right-now-flesh-and-blood child doesn't. Not rational at all.
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