Pink Eye, Vomit, Diarrhea, Potty Training And Peeing On A Tree
What do all of these have in common? Why, Benjamin of course! I apologize for the graphic title of this post but in order for me to find it later I really needed the detail to be in place, even the gruesome, “wish I could get that out of my memory” parts. The details below aren’t going to get any better so you may want to scroll rapidly beyond this one.
Last Tuesday I picked Ben up from school and he had a little “eye booger” which gave me some pause (having dealt with pink eye before) but I figured I’d need some time before I could tell for sure if he was truly infected. By the next morning all doubt was removed when we found his eyes virtually glued shut with that nasty stuff that comes along with pink eye. This being my 5th adventure with pink eye I was hoping to just call the doctor and have him prescribe the proper medicine but, no dice, I had to go into the office and burn a $40 co-pay and 1.5 hours of my time.
Getting eye drops into a 2-year-old is about as simple as trying to brush the back teeth of a rabid pit bull. Three days of application, twice per day. There’s got to be a better way!
The next day I kept Ben home from school and he ended up with the largest volume of diarrhea that I have ever seen come out of a human (Remember, I told you this would be gross). Completely filled diaper, up the back, soaked pants… the works. I cleaned him up but he really needed a bath at that point so into the tub he went. When I pulled him out he looked at me and vomited all over the place (should I take that personally?). So now he’s feeling like poo (pardon the pun) and I need to tackle him to insert eye drops. Cool! He must be thinking that I’m punishing him for something because he’s also become quite submissive at this point. Poor guy. 
On a brighter note, we’ve been potty training him and have a little reward system going where he gets a sticker on a chart for each time he “goes” in the potty instead of the diaper. He had 15 boxes and when all were filled he got a trip to Chuck E. Cheese’s (he got to go yesterday). It’s a nice exercise but I think he prefers the diaper so he’s not working terribly hard. Abby was much easier but that’s because she *wanted* to get out of diapers. I suppose in the next couple of weeks we’ll bite the bullet and really get religious about getting him trained.
And finally, Ben got his first experience with peeing on a tree. I don’t have the exact details because Kerri was with him. I guess they were around the house and he indicated that he had to “go”. We didn’t have a diaper on him and there may not have been time to get him into the house so they picked the nearest tree and let him water. I’m sure he’s seen me do it while out camping so it wasn’t a foreign idea (that’s right, I admit it!) but now that’s kinda what he wants to do, rather than use the bathroom like the rest of the civilized world. While some folks might be put off by the notion of peeing on a tree I view the first time as a perfect celebration of coming into boyhood. I’ll let you know if it was one of our fruit trees that he “went” on so you can avoid having peach or apple from our next harvest.
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