Lost Coupon

So I'm cleaning up from dinner last night when the squeaker comes running into the kitchen. He looks very pleased with himself, and he says excitedly, "Mama, I found your coupon!"

Puzzled because I couldn't recall having lost a coupon, or indeed having had any in the first place, I look up to see that he's clutching not a scrap of paper, but the disassembled pieces of a tampon (!), which he found in a box in the bathroom vanity drawer.

Yeesh. At least we didn't have dinner guests.

How to Eat Fried....

We worry a lot about the food the squeaker eats. Does it have traces of peanuts? Does it contain soy protein? Blah blah blah.

It appears that we’ve placed an undue emphasis on food. But who knew we had to worry about the creepy crawlies, too? The squeaker is past that age where he puts everything he finds in his mouth. Or so we thought.

Friday morning, we let him wander around outside while we were trying to get everything together to register and title our cars in Pennsylvania (which, by the way, cost $100 per car!! Ouch!). We were supposed to get a rubbing of each car’s VIN, which is nearly impossible, since the most prominent location of a raised VIN is on the very front edge of the dashboard, under the narrowest part of the windshield. So my husband is shaving a crayon to squeeze it in this tiny space, and I’m crawling around the cars to see if there are any other places with a raised VIN, and we’re both keeping an eye in the squeaker, who is happily walking around the cars and playing in the driveway. Our house is so far from the street that we don’t need to worry about cars or traffic.

From the car, I can see the squeaker appears to be spitting something out. He is leaning over it and rubbing his mouth. I watch for a few minutes as he bends over to look at whatever he dropped or spit out. I didn’t think much of it. My husband checks on him a few minutes later, and then he brings him to me and says, “Why don’t you take him inside to give him a drink?”

“Yes, please,” says the squeaker, who is still rubbing his mouth.

“Did he put something in his mouth?” I ask my husband.

“Um, no. Well, yes. But it’s no big deal. Just give him a drink of water, OK?” So I figure it was probably something nasty like a spider, and that I’m being deprived of the details for my own sake, so I don’t worry too much about it. Until the squeaker’s face begins to break out in welts around his mouth, and he’s crying and rubbing his mouth and sputtering.

“You have to tell me what he had in his mouth,” I tell my husband. “He seems to be reacting to it.”

“It was a caterpillar,” he says.

Gross. And my next thought is that they’re probably toxic, because how else could they protect themselves from the birds and other (non-human) critters that want to eat them?

“But he didn’t eat it,” continues my husband. “I’m not even sure if it was really IN his mouth.”

Even so, now I’m very anxious. I pull out the laptop to look up the stupid caterpillar. We have tons of them, and they look like this. It doesn’t take me long to learn that the squeaker managed to find one of the very few caterpillars that actually sting, and that the toxin in their hairs can cause reactions from skin rashes to fever and nausea.

“Why did you put a caterpillar in your mouth?!?” I fumed at him.

“Because,” he said meekly, “I wanted to taste it.”

Ugh.

Anyway, after some benadryl and a nap, he was fine. But EWWWW. How gross is that?

Wiggle Wiggle Wiggle

Bedtime has been a struggle lately. The squeaker can't seem to settle down. He wiggles all over the place, tosses and turns, and sings little songs.

When I tell him to STOP WIGGLING, he says, indignantly, "I'm not wiggling! The blankets are wiggling."

Long pause.

"See? I'm holding still." (Which he says while pausing momentarily in his wiggling.)

I've warned him that he's wiggling himself right into his own bed, which only results in more anxious wiggling and some worrying ("But I'd miss you, mama. I'd be lonely and sad." Wiggle wiggle wiggle.)

He's also been talking in his sleep, or maybe at that moment when he first wakes. He said, "Where's my pizza?!?" quite loudly at 5 am, for example. It's a bit unnerving for me, but he seems to have no memory of saying such random things.

I have this vague memory that I used to go to bed quite peacefully, with no one kicking the blankets off or softly singing the Itsy Bitsy Spider 10 times consecutively. Maybe I would even read a book for a while without having to explain it to someone ("Is that your Hobbit? Will you read it to me?"). And sometimes I feel a bit of longing for those peaceful times.

And then I get a big kiss ("I mooched you, mama!!"), and he tells me that he loves me more than the "raisin loves his treasure," (er -- that's "raven," not "raisin," from the book Mama, Do You Love Me?, but his love is heartfelt even if the words make me chuckle a bit), and he pats my hair. Then I know that I couldn't send him off to loneliness -- not even for a peaceful night.

Riding an Elephant

The squeaker got to ride an elephant. (He is second from the front.)

Days before we headed to the Renaissance Festival, we told him there would be an elephant, and that he could ride it. This so occupied his thoughts that he would suddenly ask random questions like "Do elephants have saddles?" We couldn't tell if he was worried about the logistics, or just curious about how it all worked.

In any case, he was excited. So when we got to the festival, we hurried straight to the elephant pen (which, by the way, I avoided in my pre-motherhood days because of the nagging feeling that there is something cruel in making an elephant pace around a small enclosure all day with kids dressed as princesses and fairies and knights on its back. But of course, that was THEN.)

BUT, the elephant pen was empty. No hay. No telling piles of elephant dung. No nothing.

I could hear my mother's voice in my head: "Amateur! Why'd you promise the kid an elephant ride before you were 100% sure there was an elephant?!?" But there is an elephant every year, and so I clung to hope.

Instead, we rode the ponies twice. Then we hovered nonchalantly around the elephant pen, trying to look like we weren't staking out a place in line. (The elephant always attracts a large crowd of tired looking parents and whiny kids.) The squeaker got some shiny rocks and ate some potato wedges. And then the elephant appeared. We raced over and got the third place in line. Other kids were noisy and bouncy in their excitement, but as is his way, the squeaker was quiet and thoughtful, almost zen-like in his patience.

And then it was his turn, and he got on with his cousins and his aunt and his papa, and it was glorious. 30 seconds later, it was over. Mama took pictures. And the squeaker noted that the elephant did NOT have a saddle -- just a blanket and a metal rail.

God

Want to talk to God?

Predict Your Date of Death

Here.

OK, so it's not exactly a pleasant exercise. But it does drive home the health risks of excess weight and of smoking. And yet what about all the other risks that are variable from person to person? While I'm glad to get points for being a non-smoker, doesn't it count that I always wear a seatbelt, that I eat my vegetables, and that I get my teeth cleaned professionally twice a year?

Also, how meaningful is length of life without an evaluation of quality of life? Are the thin, non-smokers more or less likely than chubby smokers to end up drooling in nursing homes for the last ten years of their lives? That's what I really want to know. I don't care quite so much exactly when the end comes (though I'd like to live a long life) as I do about how it comes about. Peaceful would be nice, but quick and sudden would be best. Living to 85 with 5 years of misery at the end doesn't sound very appealing. As my mom says, too much healthy living might just be adding years to the wrong end of life.

In any case, it's a curious site.

Nurse!

I've written here before about how the squeaker greets me when I get home from work -- "Nurse! Nurse!"

So just now I was on the phone with him -- this is a new thing for him, talking on the phone -- and the first thing he says is, "Mama, nurse, nurse!"

Um, not until the nee nees can be teleported, sweetheart!

Not to Point Out the Obvious, But...

Here’s what surprises me about the Foley incident – how stupid do you have to be to have these kinds of sexually suggestive conversations in a format with such staying power? Why would anyone with half a brain provide such a clear, verifiable, traceable, and effectively permanent record of something that could bring down their entire political career?

The exchanges are creepy for what the reveal about the inner longings of the Congressman (ick). They are humorous (and unsurprising) for what they reveal about his hypocrisy. But they are truly stunning for what they reveal about his stupidity, carelessness, and naivete. Yikes. What a moron.