Some days, I am faced with some interesting surprises. The unfortunate thing is, occasionally, they are surprise time bombs. As I have mentioned in earlier posts, Mason loves to tear the house apart daily by scattering his toys around the house. Well, he has decided to step things up a notch. Once his toys are sufficiently re-distributed throughout the house he moves on to bigger and better things.
For example, the other night when I got home from work, Laura looked like she had spent a little too much time with a two year old. Exasperated, and in her usual, loving tone, explained to me that it was my night to “watch the kid”. Ah, message received. She headed off to take a long hot bath and relax.
I headed through the mine field we call the dining room having to step over nearly every toy that Mason owns. As I approach my easy chair, I see some dark stuff in the seat. Upon closer inspection, I could tell that he had eaten some Oreo’s for snack…in my chair. Or at least was given Oreo’s to eat. However, it was more fun to smash them into my chair then brush the remains onto the floor. This presented me with an opportunity to clean the house which was NOT in my plans for the night.
As I start picking up the living room, Mason heads off. I assumed that he was going to knock on the bathroom door in an attempt to be let in (and be occupied for a while). As I start getting the toys off the floor and into his toy box, I was finding pieces of breakfast cereal in nearly every toy. I found out later that Mason threw his bowl of dry cereal onto the floor and proceeded to stuff it into anything and everything. I head into the kitchen to throw away a handful of Lucky Charm bits and Mason was not standing at the bathroom door. Instead, he was in the process of emptying out one of the kitchen draws full of cooking utensils. That in itself isn’t too bad, but he had already emptied all the cabinets that he could reach. There were groceries, pots, pans, cooking utensils, dog food, etc. throughout the kitchen.
“Mason! What are you doing!!!” His response…he sticks his arms straight out with his palms up and says “sarreee”. As if THAT was going to get him out of trouble. Time for Mason to help clean up his own mess. Back to the living room we head.
To Mason’s credit, he helped pick up his toys. There is a plastic Jack-O-Lantern bucket from Halloween sitting in the middle of the dining room floor stuffed to the brim with various toys. I pick it up and start pulling out the toys and grab something cold, wet and soft…an old banana. Surprise! Just what I wanted, a half eaten mushy banana. Not really sure how long it had been there but sometimes it’s better not to ask those kinds of questions.
After getting the bucket cleaned out I go back into the living room. Mason has stopped picking up his toys and is playing with some cars on the table. As I walk in, he looks at me, points to his John Deere riding toy and says “EEEWWW”. Great! Bad things generally come after that. The seat on this toy lifts up with a small area to store the small plastic animals that came with the toy. Unfortunately, the animals were sitting in spoiling milk…nasty! I'm guessing that Mason has figured out how to get the lid off his cup.
After getting everything picked up, it was time for me to start making supper. I open the fridge to get some hamburger and find my glasses case sitting on the shelf…and a plastic CAT dozer…and several hot wheel cars…and a flashlight. Out of curiosity, I open the freezer. In there, I found the remote to the TV…some juice boxes that used to be in the fridge…a stuffed turtle…and a paint brush.
He is a quick little bugger. The most unfortunate thing about the whole situation is that I cannot blame Laura for not watching Mason all day…the kitchen drawers were emptied and the fridge was filled while I was watching him. Oh well. I am just waiting to see what little surprises are coming next.
Tags: Treasure
It is no surprise to us by now that when Mason gets sick, Laura and I are in for trouble. This last illness started about a week ago with Mason running a high fever for a few days. Although, you would never know it from the fact that Mason does not slow down for a second.
After the third day of Mason’s fever, and the fever reducer not doing much, Laura decided to take him to the doctor. It was Friday morning, and Laura was able to call at 8:00 in the morning and get an appointment at 10:15. After getting to the doctor’s office, she checked in, filled out the standard “what’s your problem” forms, and sat down and waited to be called back. At 10:45 I got a text message, since I was at work, that she was still waiting to see the doctor.
Once she was finally called back and Mason was seen by the doctor, they decided to do some blood work on him. Down to the lab they head. When I was a kid, I HATED getting my blood taken. A mean old nurse would stab me three to four times in each arm before finally getting a vein. Why, you ask, did it take so many times to get blood from my arm? Well, it was a combination of a couple things. First, my veins do not seem to be well attached inside my arm and move out of the way of an approaching needle. Second, it is very difficult to draw blood from a little kid when he is screaming, flailing wildly, and kicking you in the shins (repeatedly). It usually took my mother and an extra nurse just to pin me down. Fortunately for Mason’s nurse, he took it a little better than I did. The nurse gave him a bright green bandage to wear over his owie.
While sitting back in the waiting room, there was another little girl that had the same symptoms as Mason the week before and was back at the doctor. Apparently, our doctor and her doctor had a little confab about this mysterious illness. Her doctor ended up admitting the poor little girl because she started coughing up blood. Huh, same symptoms as Mason just a week earlier, makes Laura and I both a little nervous. The doctor told Laura that if Mason’s fever did not get better in a week, to bring him back. He was not sure exactly what Mason had, but there wasn’t much they could do for him.
Saturday rolls around and all Mason wants to do is sit with his mom. He has developed a nasty sounding cough and has a 102F temperature. That evening his fever broke and he was running around destroying the house like usual. Sunday, he takes a turn for the worst. He has a fever again and his chest is so congested, he chokes when he lays down. To make things worse, Laura does not feel well. So, I ended up sitting with Mason in my easy chair Sunday night. It is always fun to sit in a recliner with a sick kid that looks right at me to cough. Note to self, keep mouth closed at all times. At three a.m. when Laura took over, since both my legs had fallen asleep, Mason had a 103F temperature. Two hours later, my alarm goes off and I get up to get ready for work. Since Laura wasn’t feeling well, and Mason was still sick, I decided to work from home.
Laura called and made another appointment at the doctor Monday morning. They were able to get him in at 11:00. This time I went with them. We got right in to see the doctor who ordered more blood work. Fortunately, it came back fine. Unfortunately, Mason was diagnosed with a nasty virus and there is nothing that we could do for him. The only advice we got was to make sure that we give him fever reducer to keep his fever at bay.
It is a week later and Mason is feeling better, but the cough remains. Hopefully, he gets over it soon. If history repeats itself, whenever Mason gets sick, he gives it to Laura then I end up with it. So I am guessing I am next in line to experience whatever it was that Mason had. So far so good, but I’m afraid that it is only a matter of time.
Mason was so proud of his bright green bandage from the lab work, he won’t let Laura or I take it off.
As a father raising a two year old son, I sometimes feel that I need to prepare Mason for real life. Now, obviously, he is a little too young to be teaching him small engine repair…or how to drive the tractor…or how to restrain yourself from cursing a blue streak across the yard after dropping a cinder block on your foot, but, in my humble opinion, it is never too late to teach him not to panic when something bad happens.
Like many kids, Mason loves to play outside during the day…or night…or whenever he feels the time is right and has a clear line of sight to the door. That kid is a quick one. Anyway, being the middle of winter with wind chills often below zero, the number of days that he is allowed to play outside are limited. So, one evening, Laura bundled Mason up in his snow pants, coat, snow boots, hat and mittens. I’m impressed he could even move looking like the Michelin Man and all.
Laura goes out to supervise and occasionally act as the power to his little blue sled (since we have no hills nearby). They were outside long enough for Mason’s cheeks and nose to turn a nice rosy red.
After having run up and down the driveway several times pulling a 35 pound child on a sled, Laura decided to walk back to the house. Mason, now seeing that mom was no longer able to give chase, made a run for it. He heads up towards the barn, is gone for a little bit, and comes back without his hat and gloves. So, after a long sigh, Laura goes looking for his lost articles. When she gets back to the house, Mason is standing in the driveway, white as a ghost, staring at his hand. As Laura approaches, she saw a little blood on his middle finger about the same time Mason did…at which point, he starts flailing his hand around. It kinda looked like one of the Funniest Home Video clips when an unsuspecting women has a large spider land on her arm…lots of screaming and flailing.
Once Laura got Mason settled down, took him inside to see how bad the cut was. Fortunately, nothing serious, it looked like a paper cut just deep enough to draw blood. But to Mason, his finger had been nearly cleaved off requiring THREE band-aids! One plain brown to cover the cut, and two Sesame Street to hide the first one.
I can see that I am going to have to work with him a little bit about not panicking when he sees blood. He IS a two year old boy after all, and if my childhood is any indication as to what to expect for hospital visits, he is going to have to get past this fear. I am sure he will have an opportunity to see me do something stupid, requiring me to get stitches in the near future. What can I say, I’m accident prone. Of course, Laura calls it “making poor decisions”, but I’m not here to split hairs. We can simply use that opportunity as a “teachable moment”.
Mason loves to throw things in the house. Unfortunately, I have no one to blame but myself. I MAY have indirectly taught him how. Oops. Anyway, I think that we have finally gotten him to stop throwing hard things like Hotwheel cars and various other toys. He got in trouble after one of his John Deere tractors bounced off the TV screen and again after I got smashed in the face with a small plastic CAT bulldozer.
We are now working on getting the throwing of soft stuff stopped. That task is a little more difficult since it is funny to see Monkey fly through my line of sight doing cartwheels. The scolding does not mean as much coming from someone chuckling. However, I think after a recent unfortunate incident involving Monkey, we will probably not see Monkey acting as a crash test dummy anymore.
I was, as usual, at work when this all went down but I was emailed pictures. I had to laugh to myself quietly at my desk. Apparently, Laura was in the kitchen when she heard Mason start a series of panicked screams. As she rushed to the living room, she was overcome with laughter. Mason was standing in the middle of the room under the ceiling fan with both hands covering his mouth screaming, crying, and looking up. There it was…Monkey…hanging from the pull cord on the ceiling fan. Apparently, Mason had been tossing Monkey in the air when it got stuck.
Realizing that Mason wasn’t hurt and finding the whole incident rather humorous,
Laura went and grabbed her camera. By the time she got back, Mason had crawled up on the table to rescue Monkey from his predicament. However, the rescue attempt did not go well being that Mason was still a little panicked. So, like any good parent, Laura took a few more pictures and got Monkey down. Mason cried for a good ten minutes and would NOT let Monkey out of his arms.
I have a feeling that Monkey’s wings have been clipped!
Tags: Monkey
Last night, Laura fixed a wonderful fried chicken supper. Of course, I got the easy job of mashing the potatoes. I know that if I screw up bad enough the first time doing something, like perhaps making charcoal instead of fried chicken, I will forever be put in charge of the simplistic, i.e. mashing potatoes. Some may call it being inept at cooking, I call it a strategy. Screw it up bad enough the first time and never be asked to do it again. I consider the smoke detector going off a job well done. And yes, I know Laura is going to roll her eyes when she reads this.
Anyway, after we were done eating, we cleaned up the table and scraped the chicken bones into the trashcan. Sometime during the night, Hyde, one of our Miniature Pinchers decided to get up and help himself to some chicken. Fortunately, he did not eat the bones themselves, but did manage to get all the meat and cartilage off each and every one. He even broke several of them open and licked out all the bone marrow. When I got up this morning, there was trash and chicken bones scattered all over the kitchen floor. Huh, this is not going to turn out well.
After getting home from work, I walk through the dining room headed for my easy chair when I notice a bad smell. I asked Laura what that smell was. I should have just kept my mouth shut! After listening to her story, I was really glad that I did not have to experience it firsthand. This is the story as Laura tells it to me:
"I was standing in the kitchen doing dishes when Mason came up to me and tapped me on the hip. I look down and ask ‘what do you need Mason?’ His reply was with a hand over his mouth and a finger pointed at the dining room: “EEEEWWWWWW”. I was thinking, great, what did he spill now? As I walk into the dining room I can hear Mason standing right behind me saying “EEEEWWWWWW” over and over again. Then it hit me…a horrid smell! What on earth is that! Mason walks around the table with his hand over his mouth and nose, points to the floor and says, “EEEEWWWWWW”. Hyde had an accident. But not just any accident, he had…explosive “the most disgusting @$*% I have ever cleaned up in my LIFE!!!!” diarrhea! So much crap from such a little dog!"
Let me interrupt her story for a sec to add that I have seen her clean up some terribly nasty stuff in the almost ten years we have been married with not even a bat of the eye. So I was rather surprised to hear her reaction to a simple accident from our little dog. Anyway…
"Armed with a full roll of paper towels, I start cleaning up Hyde’s mess. I look over to see Mason standing next to the table dry heaving which quickly turned into gagging, which I learned is contagious. Here I am, the one cleaning up this pile of nasty and Mason is the one having trouble keeping down his lunch! He would cover his mouth and gag, his eyes welling up with tears, his face turning red and little veins popping out of his neck and forehead. Of course, instead of walking into another room, he just stood there gagging, over and over again. It was so disgusting!"
I am thinking that we learned one thing from this experience, NEVER feed Hyde fried chicken!
