Penny for your thoughts

The person that offered me a penny tonight would sure get more than they bargained for. I sat down feeling like I ought to blog something and realized I had too much I wanted to commit to virtual paper. Alas, you get another of those all over the map rantings.

One of those women
I never thought I'd be one of those mothers - the one that reprimands your child for you while you're standing right there. It's one thing to speak up when you're the only adult in sight. Heck, it's one thing to speak up when your child is invovled. It's another to be alone in a supermarket and take on mom-duty by reflex.

I was standing near the frozen dinners debating, as I often do, what to grab for dinner that one day I'd be working next week. A mom and her two kids were stationed at the freezer just in front of me. Mom was elbow deep in frozen meals and completely unaware of her surroundings. Her children - roughly 8 and 5 - were battling. I mean really battling. The younger, a girl, had a ball she wanted to play with. The older, a boy, felt it is his duty to enforce mom's "We're not buying the ball" decision. Big Bro yanked his sister's head back by the hair and tried to smack the ball from her grasp. Failing to do so, he shoved her.

My gut reacted before my brain could think. I actually had to choke back the words just before the leapt from my mouth. It's instinct now, "Leave your sister alone! You do not hurt her." That I stopped. What I could not stop was "the look." If you're a parent or you have parents you know of what I speak. The glare that says "You, sir, are in deep shit."

I never realized it worked on other people's children before.

The boy, he saw it. He saw me stare at him with "the look" and he released his sister. She saw it too. She relaxed a little. He took the ball and ran. She screamed bloody murder as she watched her brother slam duck it back into the display cage. That's when their mom snapped back to reality. "What's going on?" she asked. I just turned and walked away before she could see my sneer.

I passed by them, the girl still complaining about the lack of a ball in their cart. She saw me approach and stopped whining. Instead she waited until she caught my eye. Then she smiled a great big sweet smile and said "Hi!" I winked at her, which made her giggle.

Geppetto would be proud
Logan hasn't been a big fan of bugs. In fact, the mere sight of a creepy crawl thing near him would send him running in hysterics.

That was until today. Suddenly my son has become an actual boy. The shorts that literally fell off his hips just a month and a half ago, fit him just as they should today. While I could carry him without issue two weeks ago, today I feel like I'm going to drop him if I hold him too long - his weight becomes so overwhelming. He seems taller suddenly. And, when we weren't looking, he became quite ok with bugs.

It started early in the day. I was handing him clothes to put on when I saw it. A tick to the side of his ankle. We live in deer tick country. A small brown spot with legs can spell real trouble. I panicked a little as ticks on flesh often make me do. I told Logan to just sit for a second and not disappear. I went on a hunt for tweezers.

I could not find tweezers. At least not real ones. What I did finally find were bright orange plastic tweezers that came with Logan's bug house. Bugs? Ticks? Why not? For the record, thick plastic tweezers do not pinch tight enough to remove a tick. I could move it. I could lift most of it from the skin -- but not the head. And, as any good resident of 'deer tick' zone knows, that is the most important part to remove.

Off to look again for the tweezers. If this hunt produced nothing I'd have to head over to my parents to borrow theirs. This tick was small. Deer ticks...they are small. Yeah, this will be a fun day. By the time Logan was aware of what was going on. Aware enough that he took matters in his own hands. He called to me. "Don't worry! I got it."

"You got what?" I said taking large strides toward his room.

"The tick. I got the tick out of my leg."

He got the tick out. Out. He sat there on his floor holding the little brown spot on his finger tip. "See. I just pulled it. I did it gentle like you said you would do." I didn't say anything. I tipped his finger over the old babyfood jar and dropped the speck onto the damp power towel. I got the flashlight and stared closely at his leg. I looked closely at the immobile tick. It seemed he actually got the whole thing out without leaving a trace of tick behind.

We took a ride moments later to the the Agricultural Center. They identify ticks for free. If you got yourself a female deer tick, you get to take the walk across the parking lot to the Dept of Health where they test the rotten little thing for lyme's disease. If your pest had it, you get a nice post-card in the mail advising you to see your doctor.

We handed over the jar. The kids amused themselves by watching a caterpillar eat parsley and making friends with the volunteers at work there. One such volunteer called us over. "You have yourself a Lone Star Nymph. A baby tick. Not engored. And, in fact, dead by the time you got it here. All the mouth parts are intact too."

When we got in the car Logan realized we had left empty handed. "Where's the jar?" he said.

"Oh, well we didn't really need it," I said. "The lady kept it."

"But where is my tick?" he asked.

"Umm, well, at the center."

"But I wanted to keep it in the jar as a pet!" he complained loudly.

One should note that later in the day he located an errant bug in our kitchen. Although our chief bug killer (aka Daddy) was just down the hall, Logan took matters into his own hands once again. He stepped on it - and did so hard, sending gross bug innards outbound all around the deceased. He was proud of himself.

"Logan, that's gross," I told him, as I pulled his sister away from touching the squished thing. "Now I can't even vaccum it up. Here, you squished it, now you have to dipose of it. Use the paper towel to pick it up and throw it out."

This is a big thing. At least for me. The idea of touching dead bug - even through layers of paper towel just turns my stomach. I am a vaccum girl. If it crawls and there is no spouse around to do the deed, I merely turn the Hoover on. Logan, clearly, does not have my qualms. He calmly, and frankly a bit proudly, took that paper towel, lifted the bug from the ground and tossed it in the garbage can.

And then Meg, being Meg, insisted on having a wet paper towel so she could clean the spot up some more.

Four years ago
Four years ago today (June 28th) I was checking into a hosptial, having my hand poked to bits for an IV line and beginning the process of induction. My quite annoying blood pressure that had been high in the doctor's office was down to my normal 110/70 range. It didn't matter any more though. I wasn't leaving without a baby in hand.

He was due July 10th. He'd arrive before that...and yet not quite soon enough. It was almost exactly 38 hours from the time they began the induction process until he crowned. Thirty-eight. Long. Hours.

And of course, he's worth every second of it.