Monday, July 07, 2008

Facing Fears

When Eric was about 14 months old, he and Rich had a terrible stomach virus in the same night. Rich was incapacitated in bed and Eric would weep and beg for water that he would puke up on me within 10 minutes. There was a blizzard raging outside and the windows were shut tight against a frigid night, sealing in the wretched stench of human effluvium into the room with us.

It was a long night. But this morning was worse.

Eric was on the stairs in front of me, we were going to try to talk Kaylee into getting up for the day. She likes to have a good lay-about in the morning, and we were well past when she should be up and dressed.

He was heading up the stairs in front of me when I noticed a dark spot against his scalp beneath his fresh crew cut. "What's that on your head?"

"Hmmm... Maybe it's a boo boo?" He said, unconcerned.

I looked closer and there, with it's nasty, spikey head burried into the perfect skin behind my son's perfect hair was a big, fat white tick.

I wanted to scream and cry and hand him over to his dad. But my husband had left for work before six and it was all up to me. I was the mom and I couldn't be screaming and crying "EWWWEE! I don't want to touch it!!" because, Eric needed me to have my act together.

So, I tried to pull it off with toilet paper. Which, broke the thing in half and killed it. It turned out that tweezers were the solution. The head came out neatly and Eric merely whimpered while I pulled at his head. But MAN that thing was revolting.

Please, no more tics this summer. I'm not terribly squeamish, but now I keep seeing fat white ticks floating before my eyes... Such nastiness.

Sunday, July 06, 2008

Wall *E

I needed to work some downtime into the weekend. The kids had been running since 7:30 AM. I actually managed to bribe, convince Eric to take a bit of a crepe I had made. He was prepared to eat 5 bites, but he nearly gagged on the first one, so I let him stop there.

But I was very pleased. He's suddenly been about 1% more willing to try new things. This is progress. He wanted some of a muffin I had gotten from a coffee shop on Saturday when we were out and about. I was devastated, because of course he couldn't have any because it was chock full of gluten-y badness. ARGH. The one time I eat a "real" muffin in front of him and he wants it. (he NEVER wants my food) So, I went home (back to The Farm) and made him chocolate chip muffins that he didn't want to eat. But there were about 10 other people mooching around the house and my homemade muffins were gone in under one nap. I didn't even get one.

This is a literal example of "You snooze, you loose."

So, today I was a Bad Mother and corralled him from his water play in the back yard and into air conditioned comfort with a bag of skittles the size of his head to watch approximately 75 Disney previews and the movie Wall*E.

I liked Wall E. He's a little robot that is the last functioning clean up unit that builds mounds of garbage that dwarfs the skyscrapers of New York City. He lives in an old truck with his treasures gathered from amongst the trash heaps.

WallE has an adventure, he falls in love and helps save the floating corpulent amoebas that the human race has become after 700 years of inactivity.

Eric sat mesmerized for most of it. I'm trying to expand his screen time to something more stimulating than Teletubbies, but it has been slow going. I don't mind him watching a bit of TV or a movie every day or two. But they only seem to watch Teletubbies, and I think Tinky Winky is trying to suck my soul out through a vortex in my television. He's going to put it in his purse.