That boy!

As mentioned many times, my mother is numero dos of eight children. The oldest boy in her family, my uncle Dee was child number 6. According to many sources, including him, whenever my Grandma called his name as a child, it was preceded with a, "Dammit to hell!"  I love this picture of him as a little kid.  I think it probably personifies the spirit of his childhood.  He was strong willed, the first born boy and often gave my grandma a run for her money.

Now, fast forward a bit....oh, 40 something years to the little boy, almost two, who resides in my home. The one we call, The Chick. This kid...I tell you what. The moniker that my uncle so fondly remembers being his may start to stick to this kid. He's sick all the time and I'll admit that we baby him because of that. It's hard not to. Regardless, this kid has a mind of his own, a strong will, and is sneaky, sneaky, sneaky.

At Disneyland, when he wasn't coughing up a lung, he was dragging a blanket, whining and yelling at us. At several points during our trip he just gave up and found a great piece of asphalt to curl up on and call home. For the last 90 minutes of our car ride home he would pull his bink out of his mouth and scream, "DAD! UP! NOW! PLEASE!" because he wanted out of his car seat.

Yesterday, bless his heart, he had a nearly 4 hour nap and Elliott and I didn't know what to do with ourselves. There wasn't anyone to cough on us, yell at us, or take a swing. Today though he must be feeling better because that Chickadee of ours is back in true form.

Elliott was at school. I was folding laundry in my room and Wyatt was playing in his. I finished the laundry and checked on him. All was well. I came downstairs to send a few e-mails on the laptop. I literally didn't leave him unsupervised for more than 7 minutes. Not a big deal, or so I thought.

I came upstairs to get him ready to go and pick Elliott up from school. After there was no response from calling his name I should have known that I'd find trouble. And trouble there was. That boy of mine was hiding in a corner of his room. There was a familiar smell wafting from the bedroom. That boy of mine, upon closer inspection, was covered in St. Ives Apricot face scrub. It was in his hair, all over his face like a beard, up his nose a bit, and caked on his hands, shirt and pants.

I picked him up and carried him to my room. Luckily, the mess was all on him and he'd had enough common sense to place the squeezed out tube on an empty zip lock bag on my bed. Oh, so considerate!

We then marched into the bathroom and I stripped him down for bath number two of the morning. By this point, the stuff had been on him 10 minutes and he'd been rubbing it in...his entire face was blister red, as was a couple spots on his head. I was certain he was having an allergic reaction and I'd need to find the eppi pen. I also was pretty sure that he'd eaten some, he's that kind of kid, and I didn't know what I was going to do.

I got him bathed and dressed, carefully washing all the scratchy stuff off his face, avoiding his eyes. I then forced as much water and juice into his system as I could, hoping to flush it out. But then I figured he didn't eat any....his mouth looked clean.

Anyway....this kid is such a terror. His true personality came out on our vacation and I'm really starting to worry about what I'm going to do with him when he brings bugs and critters into my house. He already eats dirt....what next?

Elliott may have regularly scheduled meltdowns and tell me that I'm dumb. But, he isn't sneaky....except for that one time last summer when he shoved a q-tip into his ear and busted out his ear drum.

Yeah, except for that.