A Short Story for you all to enjoy this fine Monday afternoon…..

So yesterday evening Damon and I were out in the back yard tending to some lawn chores. We had filled up the kiddie pool for Sullivan to play in while we worked as it was in the mid 90’s and quite warm. We had spent most of the weekend indoors because of the hot weather but thought it would be a nice change of pace to get outside and feel the sun as fierce as it was. Anyway, Sullivan was fully engaged in the serious business of filling the pool with as many sticks and leaves as possible and was requesting to get into his frog sandbox…..a favorite past time of his. I am usually very hesitant to let Sullivan inside the giant sand filled frog as it always leads to sand being tossed all over the place and hours spent afterwards ridding the sticky gritty stuff from between toes, hiney, and head……..BUT we were trying work so Mommy reluctantly resigned to some sand play. Damon was around the side of the house weed eating and trimming our unruly side yard forest and I was power washing some old lawn furniture that had become dirty. I glanced over and saw Sullivan sitting down on his bottom with his wet swim shorts pouring sand ALL over himself. As much as I cringed at the mess he was making I new he was having fun so I smiled and continued my work. I finished the power washing and had moved on to the ever so fun task of cleaning up dog poop in the yard when I heard Sullivan let out a horrible scream. I have heard mothers say that you will know the difference between an unimportant cry and a real cry of need and THIS was one of the later. I ran over to Sullivan and he was shaking and grabbing his side with his hand screaming “hurt, hurt” like he had been badly hurt. I immediately knew what had happened and lifted up his shirt to see the suspected wasp sting mark on the side of his chest. (We have lots of wasps around our house and it has been on my to do list for some time to spray their little homes under our gutters.) Well, giant crocodile tears were now streaming down his face which he can often produce with ease these days when he hears that it is bedtime but these tears looked different and were accompanied with a real look of pain and fear. Seated frozen in the sandbox turning red and screaming with discomfort I immediately picked him up and ran over to tell Damon that he had been stung by a wasp and that I was taking him into the house….. to do what? I had NO idea… but I knew he needed to be tended to and I hoped that a plan would somehow present itself to me by the time I got inside. I cradled Sullivan close to me as I walked up the back steps to the sliding glass door. His wet swim pants, shirt, shoes and body were caked with sand which now covered me from head to toe. And I stopped. I stopped and remembered that earlier that afternoon Damon had spent nearly an hour vacuuming the entire house…sweeping up bags full of Brodie hair…enough to make two sweaters and the carpet was pristine….that wonderful you can still see the lines from the vacuum cleaner clean and we very well couldn’t just run inside with wet muddy sand covered shoes and clothes and destroy that kind of beauty…..could we? Now let me stop for a moment and look back to the Jill of 20 years ago. The Jill whose room was filled from floor to ceiling with dirty clothes and old hot chocolate mugs and crumpled up used tissues. The Jill whose car never saw a bath or interior vacuum unless her father felt sorry for the creature and would kidnap it and take it to the wash. The Jill of 20 years ago would never have even stopped for one moment to think about getting sand or mud on the carpet and yet there I stood at the top of the stairs of my home my child screaming with pain and that was all I could think about. The new Jill has lived a life of neat freakness for over two years now. It began during the nesting phase of my pregnancy and well…. has never gone away. So tending to my son’s medical needs was now second on the list to stripping him down and ridding him of all sand before entering the house with the freshly vacuumed carpet. The plan for addressing his medical situation that I had hoped would present itself to me once inside was now replaced with my urgent need to get him clean. And so at the top of the stairs I set my son down and began to strip him of all of his clothes. Wet and gritty from sand the clothes did not want to come off easily and Sullivan was not aiding the urgent CLEANING situation because all he wanted was to be back in my arms. But somehow I managed to get all the clothes off so that we could go inside. /BATH – WATER – RINSE OFF SAND/. That was the plan that popped into my head. Clean him off and all will be okay. So into the bathroom we went to fill up the tub and clean this dirty baby off. Hot water on….cold water on…..drain stop in place and then Sullivan. Into the water he went along with terrible screams. “Out, Out” he cried, climbing and crying to get out of the tub. Shaking from head to toe with discomfort I pulled him out…STILL dirty…still covered in sand. I couldn’t figure out why he didn’t want to be in the water. He loves water and LOVES taking baths. Was the water to hot or too cold. I check and it seemed the perfect temperature so I got out his bath toys and tried the menuever again. Bath a bit fuller and toys floating around now he seemed agreeable to giving it another shot …soo into the tub he went again followed by more cries and more shaking. Then it hit me. He just hurts Jill. I giant wasp stung him and he doesn’t know how to make it feel better. Abort Mission -Try to Get Sullivan Clean and just hold him. So against my intense desire to clean my son I scooped him up into my arms, wrapped him in a towel and sat on the floor of the bathroom, wet, dirty, and sandy and just rocked. Life didn’t come to a screetching halt. The Clean Gods didn’t come down and punish me for having a dirty child in the house and messing up the pristine vacuum lines on the carpet but my son DID calm down. I did eventually get him clean and before I knew it I was tending to his sting. Putting meat tenderizer on it then Bactine, and then to rewarding him with an ice treat and ravioli’s in front of a much loved movie for making it through the trauma all intact. No major reaction to the sting and I imagine he would have calmed down much sooner had his desire to be comforted been met with willing arms from Mommy instead of operation CLEAN.

So there you have it. Young messy girl grows up to be neat freak mom learns to let go of neat freakiness and everyone survives in the end. Just another installment of /Mom with no experience with this parenting thing surviving this parenting thing /mini-series. Stayed tuned for more stories as I know there are going to be many more stories like this.

Jill