Life With Boys

Life with boys … from the archives …

This week, I participated in a campuswide community service project, #MaryvilleReachesOut. I joined a group at the Girl Scouts of Eastern Missouri to help prep “subscription” style boxes that included projects to help the girls work on this badge or that … (Awesome service if you ask former scout leader me.) Our task was to put 10 googly eyes in a bag until we ran out … 4,000 googly eyes later … that was a bit mind-numbing, but there was no painting or pulling of strangers’ weeds involved, so it worked for me …

Anyway … I was reminded of this little gem from December of 2004 … Never proclaim that your child has not swallowed anything …

It’s way too early for the boy to up AGAIN. Now what? We just got you back to sleep.

So, I go and get him, and of course, my first thought is, “he must be teething” … ‘cause that’s always my first thought these days … OK – no teeth that I can see or feel without getting bitten.

Now I tip the boy’s head back to see what else I can find … by the dim light of the duckie nightlight (which is in MY room … mature, I know, let me be) … I see a dark spot on the roof of his mouth. OMG, he has a hole in his soft palate. I yell for reinforcements from the biggest of the boys.

The large boy stumbles out of the bathroom … not in good humor at this wee morning hour and is convinced that I have lost my mind … once again. In his brilliance, he turns on the light … and I give him the screaming child and tell him to stick his fingers in the lion’s mouth.

The large boy is not complying with my request … so I stick my finger in … the spot is hard – not quite like a hole should be … It’s got a white circle around the edge … has an infection already set in … are there more antibiotics in our future?

Hold on, I need a better look … What now? How did he do this? The boy has managed to get a googly eye stuck in his soft palate, and I mean STUCK; this plastic bugger is not budging … I guess I know the root of the screaming now.

OK, I can handle this; I’m a super mom … able to handle small emergencies in a single bound … I sacrifice my fingers again and with more pressure than you would think is necessary to remove a googly eye from the roof of an infant, I get it loose … and immediately proceed to drop it … down his throat.

And then there is silence … and we say a prayer for safe passage … the boy tumbles off my lap to find another Christmas tree ornament to consume … and I go to find the Tylenol for both of us.

And no, I did not verify the safe passage of that googly eye …