The Plague

I like excitement and I like the unexpected.  These days, I find myself unexpectedly unexciting.  Gone are the days of late night dinners out with friends.  Gone are the days of after-show parties and false eyelashes.  Gone are the flowers wilting underneath the heat of my dressing room lights.  

Enter Act II of my life, where late night dinners are replaced with late night barf bowls.  After-show parties replaced with potty training parties.  False eyelashes?  Nope.  Undereye puffiness reducer cream (which is proving to be a waste of my money).  No more fresh flowers, just fresh packages of wet wipes.  

Because I've complained of boredom, I suppose I was blessed this week with a little bit of excitement.  In the form of the dreaded plague(s).  Our story reads like a case study in a manual at the CDC.

I started the week with Jay and Drew going on an unscheduled body cleanse.  The stomach flu hit them hard.  Poor guys.   

Meanwhile, I had the brilliant idea that this was the week for Kai to potty train.  After several wet pants, some misses at the toilet and one very unfortunate incident involving our carpet and poop (all hail the expensive carpet extractor!)....I am happy to report that Kai has now joined the older boys in the "unna"pants parade.  He's now so "trained" that when he has to go to the bathroom he says, "Oh, no!  Not again!"


Next on the agenda was Owen's ear infection that had him begging in agony to go to the doctor's office so he could get some medicine.  Since we've never had an ear infection in this house, I was unaware that I could've put him out of his misery sooner by giving him Motrin.  

Don't worry, he got me back later by getting the stomach bug.


And not to be outdone, Kai brushed his teeth.... with a tube of hydracortisone cream. 

He stood on the counter, moved aside the actual toothpaste, and extracted the faux paste.  (I have now Kai proofed that area.)  After a quick and pleasant call to my friends at the Poison Control Center (we've chatted about Kai a time or two), we sent him to bed, only to be woken up several hours later to his barking cough.

Kai got pneumonia.  I have a sneaking suspicion that the pneumonia could quite possibly be due to the Great Goodwill Pole Licking Incident (see post below).  I'm digging deep into my motherly treasure box of feelings to extract the appropriate amount of restraint needed to not dance around him saying, "That's what you get for licking that pole in Dirty Old Goodwill!"

Cora, in an effort to show solidarity, got an ear infection, bronchitis and pink eye.  (I actually think the doctor is wrong on the pink eye part.)  Poor little precious baby looks innocent and sweet but she sounds like she was born with a cigarette in her mouth.

The really good news is that Drew didn't start getting an earache until Friday night after Jay was home and we'd already learned the trick about the Motrin.  The stomach bug didn't bite me until Saturday and I was afforded some much needed time in my bed writhing and moaning while Jay dispensed breathing treatments and antibiotics like a pro. 

Happily, we're on the mend.  Thanks, in part, to the fact that we cleaned out CVS Pharmacy (and our bank account with co-pays and antibiotics).  I think we'll survive the Spencer Plague of 2011 with a little help from some Clorox Bleach.

The Tooth Fairy, however, apparently lost her mind during the germ fest.  Drew lost a tooth on Monday and that germaphobic Fairy didn't make her under pillow deposit until Wednesday.  There was much speculation about the reason she skipped Drew's pillow.  One such explanation was offered up by a very serious Owen when he speculated that the ice storm affected her wings.

The second night's snub was met with less forgiveness.  I simply told the boys that she was busy.  Drew said, with a skeptical look, "I don't know about that.  I'll believe you.....this time."  He's been let down one too many times.  (see here and here)

The events of the last week have left us all a little bit edgy, I guess. 

  *Kai passing along the dread diseases from Goodwill to Cora.  Good will, indeed.

Kai

*I wrote this early last week.

The local jail is readying its starkest cell and warning the guards to be on alert.  Kai is being sent to a lock-up where he can't pillage, plunder or otherwise wreak havoc.  

Several little items in the household are missing and we've narrowed the culprit down to one very grubby little (or not so much little) two year old scoundrel.  What in the world Kai wants with my measuring spoons is beyond me, but he sure does have them squirrelled away somewhere.  

And then there was the big one.  He's been casing the joint for weeks now.  There have been several failed attempts at the heist that ended in tears and apologies and empty promises to "not take Owen's fings eber 'gin."  

While I was busy falling for his pleas of innocence with his disarming grin and talk of me being "boo-veal", he was busy making a more sophisticated plan of attack.

He is a master of trickery and thievery.  While Owen and I were otherwise occupied, Kai sneaked in and snatched Owen's video game and cartridges (an item he's been eyeballing since Christmas) and took the contraband somewhere only a little thief knows.  (Maybe with my measuring spoons?)  

Now that his master plan has succeeded, he's been banished to his room to "think about what he's done" or, better yet, fall asleep and wake up not a thief. 

When he's not busy lifting valuables, he's busy makes messes.  With no rhyme or reason, he goes about the house and leaves a trail of disaster in his wake.  

Cora's neatly stacked diaper bin?  Strewn from one wall of my bedroom to the other.

Cereal?  Leaving a very conspicuous trail from the kitchen, down the stairs to the toy room below.

My neatly folded laundry?  Now it isn't so neat.

And this is all before noon!

Baby-proofing is a joke.  I'm going to have to resort to Kai-proofing, which requires steel, padlocks, and booby traps.

I don't want to give off the impression that Kai doesn't have a softer side.  He does.

His lips are mighty soft and shiny.  My brand new minty lip gloss is now half gone and covering the sheets on my bed and the cheeks of his face.  The other tube has so many bite marks on it that I have several dispensing options. 

He is a crafty little bugger.  He knows that as soon as I sit down to feed Cora is the time to make a break for it.  He raids the pantry searching for the perfect snack to go with his "juicy:" that he tries to pour himself!

That never ends well.  (Cue outfit number four for the day.)


Speaking of ending, his good health and vigor might be coming to a screeching halt after a little stunt he pulled yesterday. 


I look over and he's having a moment with a pole in Goodwill.  That child is busy trying to figure out how many licks it takes to get every dread disease in Northern Virginia.


He's licking the pole!!!


In dirty old Goodwill!!!


I have no more words.  I have no more tricks up my sleeve.  I have only a wing and a prayer that I will survive him.