The day started like any other, at midnight with a child sneaking down the hall to watch t.v. thinking it was early in the morning.
Technically, it was early in the morning…..very, very early. We tried to convince her she was sleep-walking, preventing a full-throttle convertor sword fight and coaxed her back to bed. Okay, Greg did all of this while I slept soundly but I did mention to him when he returned how lucky we’ve been that none of our kids have been sick in a very, very long time.
I can hear Pink’s voice in my head whispering, “Why do I do that?” because the next noise I heard was our five year old moaning and complaining she was having a bad dream. Maybe she dreamt her sister had banked three minutes of television she was being deprived of so we were going to have to owe her an additional three minutes the following morning while Hanna was ear-muffed and blindfolded in an isolation booth.
She complained her throat was sore and at 2am when I do my best parenting, I convinced her to think nice thoughts and go back to sleep. My plan worked until 7:00am when big sister was perched in front of the t.v. once again, no one will ever know how many hours she’d been sitting there and until we get those Nielson votes in we’ll be living in the dark. Ellie looked well, puffy. Her throat looked red and when we attempted to pull the digital thermometer out of the cupboard, the box of neon food dye used for Easter eggs and cupcake making icing fell on the floor. We busied ourselves taking the temperature of our little blowfish unaware the baby was squeezing and sucking dry a tube of purple food dye.
When I finally looked at her, I mean really looked at her, the ink dripping from her mouth appeared to be some sort of radioactive blood and each drop that fell to the floor left a permanent mark on our kitchen tile grout, a reminder we should never EVER spew the words, “None of our kids have been sick in a very, very long time.”
We now had a red and a purple throat, the makings of a Dr. Seuss book with a foreword by Child Services.
The purple didn’t exactly wash off her skin as I had hoped. It now appears to be a number of gigantic misshapen bruises circling half of her face, all of her neck and most of her chest. Her shirt was tossed in the garbage so please refrain from sending me your best home remedies for removing purple food dye from clothing, there simply is no time for that kind of attention to detail unless it involves a conveniently placed pair of junk drawer scissors.
She was quick to stomp all over a puzzle Ellie and I worked on the first chance she got.
I deserved that.
