Ornery Up to His Ears - Literally!

Yep, it's been forever since I've posted. Though I've been a bit short on time and energy through the holidays, the boys haven't left me a bit short of material to write about! I finally decided I'm just going to have to start now and go forward from here. Maybe we'll have a slow day somewhere along the way and I can fill in with some of what's been going on in the mean time.

If you know my boys at all, you can guess by the title who the main character in this story will be!

This Saturday started out pretty relaxed. A friend came over in the afternoon and hung out with the boys while I did some work around the house and ran an errand. Later in the afternoon I started making homemade soft pretzels with the boys. They love to help me in the kitchen and are pretty good at it too! Once we got the dough mixed up it needed to rise a bit before we portioned it out to shape our pretzels. I left the room for a bit to work on something or another.

After just a few minutes, I came back to the kitchen and began to set things up for the boys to roll out the pretzels and shape them. Things were going great and they were fairly patient and very cooperative. Once the dough was ready and I had everything set up, they sat down to their table and got to work. We made 20 pretzels in assorted letter, snake, squiggle and smooshy shapes. I painted on the egg wash and the boys began to sprinkle some with cinnamon and sugar and some with coarse salt. Then I noticed it.

Isaac had a touch of dark red, just inside his ear and on his face just in front of his ear. My heart sunk. Since September the boys have been on at least 3 rounds of antibiotics each for ear infections. Some have been bad enough the pediatrician has warned the eardrum may rupture. So far we had avoided it, but here it was late Saturday afternoon and things weren't looking so good. I started praying and decided that for the moment, he seemed content and they were both working together so nicely that I couldn't stand to interrupt. I would put my panic on hold and review the situation a few minutes later when the pretzels were made out. As they finished, I also noticed some red on Isaac's finger and was sure it was from touching his ear since it must have been terribly uncomfortable. We wrapped things up and with utmost concern, I asked Isaac "What happened to your ear?" Without a moments hesitation Grant pipes up on his brother's behalf, "It's some of your paint Mommy, off your computer. Isaac was pretending it was his ear medicine!!!"

Silly me! Why didn't I think of that? Because the fabric paint in my computer cabinet was behind closed doors. And you know I always let him give himself medicine! So of course he would think it was a great idea to open the cabinet, pull out the red paint, put the dropper tip in his ear and try to apply like ear drops!!! Yikes! Where does he get these ideas? If I had been sitting on the other side of him I could have avoided all of the panic. His left ear was painted from top to bottom as well as some of his hair. It was pretty obvious from that side that he wasn't suffering from anything but an acute case of orneriness!

Did you know it takes fingernail polish remover to get that stuff off when it dries on the skin and in hair? I'm only mentioning this to save you some time and trouble if you have a little one anything like my Isaac!

You all take care!