Red Eyes and Goose Eggs

Thursday was a remarkable day. I think it easily lines up with Alexander’s Terrible Horrible, No-good, Very Bad Day, except that it was so ridiculous that I had to laugh even as it was all happening.

I was expecting my friend Christy to come over with her two little girls (ages 2 and 1) to use my scanner for some old family slides. While we were waiting for her to arrive, David asked to play with his beans. He has a Rubbermaid bin that I dumped a #10 can of dried pinto beans into, and he likes to stir and shovel them and dump them into funnels and containers. I put Daniel down for his morning nap, but he was having a hard time settling down. Meanwhile, another friend called, and we chatted while David played away. After a bit, David came in and said, “Mommy, stop talking to her; I have a bean up my nose!” Surprised, I looked up his nose but didn’t see anything. I guess I thought he was just being funny and didn’t think much of it. I walked into the other room, still talking on the phone, when I heard him sniffing air out of his nose, and decided he really did have something up there and needed to take a second look. I ended my phone conversation and called him over. Looking harder, and in different light, I could see that sure enough, there was a pinto bean up his nose! I plugged his other nostril and told him to farmer blow. Out launched the bean. Catastrophe averted; on with the day.

David has his very first dentist appointment scheduled for the late morning. He has been excited about getting “bugs” off his teeth and was eager to experience that. We talked about different kind of bugs: ants, ladybugs, grasshoppers, butterflies... I took a moment to have the usual conversation with him about making sure he listened to the dentist and did as he was asked. He was very compliant. Then I forewarned him that he would need to sit still for a while so they could get the bugs off his teeth. I should have kept that part to myself, because he suddenly protested, “I don’t want to go to the dentist!” I tried to reassure him that the dentist would be fun, hoping they had, at the very least, toys in the waiting room.

Christy and the girls arrived, and I visited with Christy while she scanned and the kids “played” in the other room. David was not particularly willing to share that day, and he and Ella, the 2-year-old, were having it out. I hauled him upstairs to have a conversation about sharing and being nice to friends. In the middle of that I got another dental protest. Daniel was still complaining in his crib after an hour of non-nap (you keep thinking they’ll settle down in a couple minutes….), so I brought him down.

Pretty soon it was time to go to the dentist, so I packed up my boys and left Christy to keep scanning. The dentist appointment actually went very well (yay!), but there were no toys in the waiting room (boooo!), which David was very quick to point out to me. At least we didn’t have to wait long.

When I came home, first off I was greeted by the oh-so-lovely smell of the dead squirrel in our chimney. Then I made my way into the house and found that all the toy bins had been discovered and dumped out in a pile. Not a big deal; toys are made to be played with, but it was a really big pile! I put our stuff down and went in the dining room to tell Christy about how David’s first appointment went. Kids and toys migrated to our vicinity.

Pretty soon Daniel started crying, and it took a second to register what was wrong. Christy said, “Looks like his face is wet,” and then I realized that I’d heard David climb on top of the washing machine, and he’d gotten the stain remover spray and sprayed it in Daniel’s face! I jumped up and grabbed Daniel and ran his face and eyes under the kitchen faucet for as long as I could. Daniel was fit to be tied, and very wet by the time I got finished. Christy grabbed paper towels and started wiping up spray, but then her kids started fussing. After I thought Daniel would herniate, I toweled him off a bit and then sat David down to talk about what had just happened. (I don’t think he meant to get Daniel; his mischief just covered a broad surface area and Daniel was in the middle of it). Daniel rubbed his eyes a couple times and I decided he probably needed them flushed again. This time Christy helped me, and it went much better. Then we remembered that there was still spray all over the walls and floor, and started mopping that up. We had all the kids milling around in the middle of the mess, and I (nicely) banished everyone under the age of 5 into the family room with the toys so we could get things cleaned up.

Just as we finished, David and Ella started having it out again. Ella knocked over a TV tray/side table, and the ensuing vibrations knocked down several buildings from my wooden village on top of the doorframe. One building, the biggest of the collection, fell down and the corner hit David square on the head (Nathan called it karma for the Daniel-eye incident). So I’m sitting on the floor with a crying child in each arm; one with red eyes and the other with a goose egg. And all I could do was laugh. It was barely lunch time; how could so many things go wrong in such a short period of time?!

I wondered aloud if I should call poison control, even though Daniel didn't ingest anything.  Christy said the back of the stain-remover bottle instructed to flush eyes for 15 minutes (how on earth do you subject a 13-month-old to that?) and consult a doctor. I decided it would be prudent to give Daniel one more round of rinsing, and then called the nurse hotline. Naturally, it was their lunch hour, so I had to wait over an hour before they called back. They said to call poison control to get the product-specific instructions (gee, thanks). After telling the poison control person what happened, she said if he wasn’t rubbing his eyes anymore and could tolerate bright light then I got it rinsed well enough. Both held true, so we got very, very lucky.

I breathed a huge sigh of relief when I put the boys in bed and headed out for some big-girl time.  But I'm still laughing!