The Human Kleenex

Tad is a walking snotball.

The Benadryl that we give him at night is ensuring that he sleeps through the night and doesn’t leave a pool of goo on his sheet in the morning. But by the time he eats breakfast, all the crust in his nose has come loose and the floodgates open.

Of course, one of his favorite things to do in life is bury his face on my shoulder/chest/arm/whichever body part his head happens to be nearest to. So, guess whose shirt looked like a slug had made a few tracks on it today? (Or, if you know Almost Live, that I had been out rolling around in the grass with Sluggy.)

In vain, I tried to head him off with tissues and a soft, clean cloth diaper (think of it as a really big hankerchief). I gave up when neither was available. I pulled my hand into my long sleeve and used the cuff to wipe his nose. By that time, I had resigned myself to the laundry pile and my status in life as washable Mommy.

I also gave him some Children’s Sudafed this afternoon. I’m trying to get all the snot out during the day, and make sure that the Benadryl doesn’t plug him up so badly that he gets a sinus infection or something equally horrible. We went shopping at Target this morning before naps, and I managed to buy a bottle of psuedophedrine-laden grape-flavored medicine from the very nice pharmacist, who gave me an extra medicine dropper/syringe and the correct dosage for someone of Tad’s weight. Of course, I had to show them my ID and pay for it right there at the counter. (By the way, for $2.99 a bottle, Target will flavor any unflavored medication into one of several different options… like Orange Cream, Strawberry Cream, Chocolate-Covered Cherry, Watermelon, Vanilla, etc… they call this their FLAVORx program. I think I love them now.)

The Sudafed hopped Tad up like a monkey smoking crack. A half hour after taking it, he started running in circles, pouncing on me, shrieking at the top of his lungs (happy shrieks, but quite loud), and was maniacally waving both his bunny blanket and his diaper-hanky as he ran and pounced. The funny part is that the Munchkin slept through the whole thing. Once the initial high wore off, he was fine and his nose began dripping ferociously.

The Munchkin needed that nap, too. After Target, we went over to Babies ‘R Us – I was in need of new apron bibs for her, since the one that she’s been using is starting to rip around the Velcro at the neck. Piece of crap. Anyway, she was totally pleased with her new bib (“Oh, Mommy, it pink! It so pretty!”), but then she started running around the store. I firmly warned her twice that she needed to stay with me and the cart. She ignored me to her detriment. She ended up in the basket of the cart, throwing a full-out temper tantrum, and thereby forfeited her promised lunch and playtime at McDonald’s, which set her off even more. I gritted my teeth and stuck to my guns (and I also called my mom for moral support). Tad, of course, looked at his sister like she’d lost her marbles, and fell asleep in the car while she was sobbing and wailing hysterically. He didn’t care about McDonald’s, so I could deal out consequences to her without it affecting him. I know that won’t last long…

However, during her tantrum (from which I could not get her calmed down at all with my usual tack of telling her to “take a deep breath”), she had tears streaming out of her eyes. “Mommy, please wipe my eyes,” she begged me more than once. And I complied, using the cuff of my sleeve. No, not the one I wiped Tad’s nose with. The other one.

So, now we know why I don’t wear dry-clean only clothes. I am the Human Kleenex.

And on a side note, Tad started the trashing of my shirt this morning when, after I changed his diaper, he buried his face in my chest and then grabbed my collar and looked down the front of my top, checking to see if my breasts were still there (since he doesn’t use them anymore). I rolled my eyes, smiled, and patted my very male and obviously straight son on the head. “Yes, they’re still there,” I said. “Do you miss them?”

He looked up and gave me the world’s cheesiest and toothiest grin. The cheeky little snot.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, October 11th, 2006 at 12:10 am and is filed under Children, Mommyhood, Shopping Stories.
You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed and Both comments and pings are currently closed.