I spent more of last night awake than I did sleeping, so my mind was racing as to what I wanted to talk about today. I thought I would share with you a couple of times that I may have overreacted or "jumped the gun" when it comes to the kids...
Sophie has always been a pretty good eater but a little over a year ago she seemed to be eating amounts of food that would rival that of her father! It went on for a few days and while I wasn't too concerned, I hit the old Google to try and see why on earth she was eating sooo much. The search page revealed itself and the words "parasitic worms" jumped off the page and burned into my retinas. Underneath that were horrible images of intestinal worms, tape worms, pin worms etc etc...it was gross!! So I immediately jumped to the conclusion that she had worms and I raced off tot he chemist to get some stuff to treat her. She gladly took the medicine but a few days later, nothing had changed! She was still eating piles of food at every meal! I went back to the internet, skipped Google and went straight to a reputable baby and child website. Reading the pages in a calm fashion and with the absence of worm images, I discovered that it was likely she was just going through a growth spurt. Now why didn't I think of that first instead of jumping straight to the worst case scenario?? Sure enough, within another day or two, she went back to eating her normal volume of food and she shot up several very noticeable centimeters. Yep, definitely a growth spurt.
Then there was Tuesday this week. I had taken Elliott for a haircut last Friday and noticed he had been touching his head a lot over the long weekend. I started to think "what if he got head lice from that hairdressers?" but I couldn't see anything in his hair (if you are like me, you have just started scratching your scalp at the mere mention of the words "head lice"). Tuesday morning though, as he was sitting at the bench, I noticed these little black dots sporadically through his hair...I freaked out. I was convinced they were head lice eggs, vowed never to return to that very reasonably priced hairdressers and raced straight off to the chemist to get some head lice eradicating supplies. I returned home, overwhelmed with the thought of treating all four of us, hot washing the sheets, towels, hats etc and sterilising all the brushes...especially because it was a rainy day! So then I decided to return to my good friend Google and research what the eggs look like...apparently they come in white, tan or brown but not black. So I started thinking back to the weekend and what on earth these little black dots could be. Then it dawned on me. Elliott had spent the best part of Monday in the shed with Mat, getting covered in grease, dirt, black car paint and goodness knows what else. In fact, at one stage, he fell into the side of Mat's car, near the tyre, and had his face half covered with dusty black muck. Ah ha! That is what the black stuff is randomly throughout his hair...crap from the shed! Well, at least I am equipped for the inevitable head lice battle that will likely begin with school next year.
Aside from those overreactions, there are times where I react just fine. Like yesterday when Elliott came walking out with the toilet brush in his hand, fiddling with the germy brush end. My haste at washing his hands and scolding him for playing with the darn thing was totally appropriate. Or last night, when I was cooking dinner and Elliott got the bathroom step and tried to climb up to the stove. The panicked yell I let out and throwing the bathroom step way off into another room was again, a totally appropriate reaction. and don't even get me started on this morning where just now he fetched the pizza cutter out of the kitchen drawer and rolled it across his hand. Seriously this kid gets into everything!!!!
I better go and be an attentive Mum because clearly Danger is Elliott's middle name.
"Who, me?"
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