Mitchell's New Assistant

It seems Mitchell has recruited himself a new assistant in his medical practice. I call him "Crazy Dr. Jack." He is almost as obsessed with "tools" as his mentor, Mitchell. I find the two of them rummaging through my kitchen and bathroom drawers together constantly, poking each other with fingernail clippers, "cutting" each other's bellies open with spatulas and whisks, wrapping each other in toilet paper, using Mitchell's doctor kit to fix all manner of ailments on each other and the rest of the family.

Mitchell has some interesting and unusual tools sometimes, but at least he uses them gently and somewhat appropriately. Crazy Dr. Jack, however, has yet to learn a gentle touch. He bashes me on the head with a hair brush, sticks a toy srynge in my unsuspecting ear or eye, insists on my stomach being bare, then jamming the stethoscope into my belly button.

In the end though, I almost always get rewarded for my participation in their medical practice: Dr Mitchell gives me a "special toy" for being so good, and Crazy Dr Jack lays his blankie over my tummy, lays his head down, and gives me a big snuggle and squeeze.

I love my personal physicians...

What I Am Thankful For

On top of the usual things on my list to be thankful for, this year I added a washing machine, skin glue, and butterfly band aids, and a quick-acting husband.

While the first half of our day yesterday went smoothly and happily, the second half was a bit more... chaotic, thanks mostly to Mitchell.  Have I ever told you that none of my boys like potatoes.  Ben is getting a bit better at eating things that aren't his favorites without too much drama, but Mitchell isn't there yet.  I only gave him a couple tiny bites of mashed potatoes, knowing there would be trouble, but once that first bite hit his tongue and he refused to swallow it, cue the gag reflex and up came all recently swallowed food.  Gross.

So the "fun" began with some vomit (hence my thankfulness for washing machines) and continued on later when he was goofing around and somehow dove face first onto the edge of my coffee table.  I was not in the room to see it, but I heard it!  Now my boys both have their things they whine or cry about, but getting hurt is usually not one of them.  They usually cry very little over wounds and brush them off and forget about them quickly.

Well, the scream coming out of Mitchell this time was worrisome, and when Matt yelled, "Deb, get in here!  I need your help!" I dropped what I was doing and ran.  Suddenly, Matt was shouting all sorts of directions at me - "Get me a wash cloth!  Get Jack out of here! I need some ice!  I need you to hold him!  It's his eye, his EYE!!"  

Apparently, Matt thought it was Mitchell's eyeball that had been wounded and was bleeding, hence the bit of panic there.  Well, he just missed his eye by a fraction, but you wouldn't know it by listening to these two.  

So Mitchell is wounded, scared, and in pain and Matt decides it is necessary to hold him down with an ice cube directly on the cut, further increasing Mitchell's pain and discomfort and now he has bloody water dripping into his eye!  Actually, once we figured out that it was the bloody water in his eye that was bothering him most and rectified that, he calmed down considerably.

We decided against the ER for many reasons, and I hope I will not regret that decision.  Although perhaps a tad panicked at first, Matt really did a great job taking care of things quickly and efficiently, and I'm pretty sure an ER trip was unnecessary. After a quick trip to the pharmacy, we cleaned his cut, glued his skin back together (not with super glue, but glue made for this, of course), put on a butterfly band aid, and gave up on any other plans for the evening and all camped out on my bed to watch a movie.  

After some Tylenol and a quick nap, he was feeling much better and back to himself.  He got bored with the movie and when I went to find him, he was busy emptying out my bathroom cabinets, looking for "tools" and piling up toothbrushes, fingernail clippers, band aides, dental floss, etc.  Like I said, back to the usual Mitchell.

Suspicious Behavior

Last night, when I announced that it was bedtime, Mitchell immediately stopped what he was doing and climbed up the stairs.  Usually, it takes some convincing or even threatening (at least a little conversation of some sort!) to complete this process, but this night, he needed nothing but that first suggestion.  Weird.  

I followed him up there and when I entered his room, there he was, in his bed, laying on his stomach, with eyes closed, pretending to sleep.  Just as I was about to compliment him on his amazing listening and obeying skills, he opened one eye, peeked at me, then whipped his hand out from under his belly, brandishing my new pizza cutter at me with a look of pure mischief on his face!  I should have suspected roguish activity from the start, knowing Mitchell as I do.  He has been eyeing that new "tool" and attempted many a swipe ever since I bought it a few weeks ago to replace the old one that had been abused by him.  This night, he finally succeeded in getting it out of the kitchen and out of my sight.  No wonder he was in such a hurry to get to bed.  Sneaky little guy...

The Dentist Strikes Again!

I think that the "killer" phase is over.  At least, I haven't heard any more about it since a couple weeks ago, when he made the decision that he would like to be a "killer" and kill bad guys (and sometimes Ben) when he grows up.

My little dentist is back.  He no longer just works on teeth and the mouth in general though.  This is a special dentist who can do...well, just about anything really.  It depends on what kind of tool he has recently discovered.  Sometimes, he is sawing off my legs and re-attaching them with water from his water bottle.  Sometimes he needs to draw on my belly to show where he is going to cut me open and fix my stomach.  Sometimes the tools get a bit creative: a few days ago, he made me lay still while he put puzzle pieces down the back of my shirt.  I forget exactly how that was fixing me...

He finds tools for his "dentistry" everywhere he goes, but just yesterday, he finally discovered my drawer in the bathroom full of odd hair styling equipment.  When he found these tools, his eyes got wide and he said, "I didn't know you had dentist tools in here!  I need these!"  He ran to get his goggles (they are one of his constant tools when he's working) and got to work with his new equipment!  What a discovery this was!  To be honest, I rarely use this stuff anyways, so I am glad someone is getting some use out of it!  

The next day, he returned to his treasure drawer, digging deaper to find a small bag of nail polish.  Oh man, what can we use these for?  In the end, he ended up setting them all up in a neat little row, got a cup out of the bathtub, and proceeded to make mixed drinks with them (not opening them, of course, just pretending.)  He'd shake one in the cup, then another, stir it up, and name it something gruesome like "bloody goo" and "sticky tub water."  I had to pretend to drink them, but I didn't pretend to like it!  One of the grossest mini-bar selections I've ever seen!

I Think I Need A Second Opinion

I did something to my back last weekend, leaving me with quite a soreness that hurts most when I pick up my giant baby or when I get jumped on unexpectedly by my 5 year old.  While picking up Jack cannot be avoided, I do try to keep the "jumping on mom" by the other boys down to a minimum right now.  Last night, I got a sneak attack though.  Ben had clearly forgotten and jumped from his bed over to Mitchell's bed where I was laying.  Ouch.  After the groans on my part and plenty of apologizing and hugging on his part, the boys decided it was time to play doctor on me.  (I love this game because it requires me to lay down.)  Dr. Ben and Dr. Mitchell got out all their "tools" (it is always so funny to see what Mitchell picks as his tools) and got to work on me.  

After plenty of cutting, poking, gluing, patting, and screwing, along with the appropriate sound effects for each, Dr. Ben diagnosed me: I just need some new bones!  Dr. Mitchell's diagnosis was a bit more...puzzling.  He was certain my legs needed to be cut off and replaced.  I tried to tell him my legs felt just fine, but there was no stopping him!  So while Ben took out all my back bones, replaced them, then glued my back back together, Mitchell busily sawed my legs off at the knees, then replaced them again.  After a high five between my two doctors, they told me I was all better and shouldn't have a sore back anymore!

Well, after all this special treatment from my personal docs, the recent pain from being jumped on had faded, so I guess (although I think I could have kept my original legs) their surgery worked to some degree!  

Dumpster Diving

I come by dumpster diving honestly: my grandpa did it, my dad did it (I specifically remember him finding a sandwich in the garbage at the lake one time and, after not being able to convince anyone else to eat it, ate it himself!  To his credit though, that is the only instance of dumpster diving I remember him doing, albeit pretty gross.)

I have taken dumpster diving to a whole new level though.  Not only did I find quite the treasure, but I made my oldest son do it for me!  After all, the "treasure" was for him and his suboordinate (Mitchell) so why not make him do the actual gathering of the item?

Let me back up a bit to give a little perspective on why a mother would possibly make her 5-year-old son get somthing out of the garbage.  One of our neighboring houses is being demolished.  It is being completely leveled to the ground, and it is an awesome thing to watch, even for me!  In order to get the best seats to watch this fantastic show, we parked our butts down in the ally, not 10 feet away from the tractor performing the amazing feat of knocking down walls and tearing down chimneys and causing total and utter destruction.  It was awesome.  Try to ignore the fact that we were actually sitting on the ground in a dirty ally, leaning our backs against someone else's garage door, hoping it didn't open on us and send us falling backwards into someone's garage.  It is at these times, when we are having so much fun doing something or watching something we don't normally get to do or see, that I wonder if providing a new and exciting experience for my boys is worth the fact that it is filthy and we are actually sitting on the ground getting covered by the dust of a newly demolished building.  Obviously, I chose fun over cleanliness this time.

So there we were, sitting on the ground, watching one man working a tractor, one man spraying the mess with a fire hose, and one man just sitting on the fence watching ("supervising" I presume.  Wish I had his job), when something caught my eye on top of the garbage bins next to us.  Now this was actually on top of the garbage bins, not actually in the bins, so it's OK, right?  It looked to me like a child's workbench, taken apart and placed on top of the bins.  The bins were squished in between the work site and the next building, so I couldn't actually reach the workbench to check it out, so I lifted Ben up and onto the bins, and he crawled across them to give me a report on what he found there.  His glowing report was that it was, indeed, a fully intact and clean workbench that had been taken apart a bit in order to fit in the small space, but otherwise in great shape!  He dragged it back to me, and we quickly carried it a block back to our house (quickly in case someone somehow knew that I had just taken a toy out of the garbage and scolded/criticized me for my disgusting act.) 

       We cleaned the thing up, brought it upstairs, put all our tools in/on it, and it is our new favorite toy!  The funny thing is, we almost bought this very same toy for Mitchell at Christmas last year, but it was more money than we wanted to spend on just one toy, so we passed.  Should I be finding and bringing home someone else's garbage (or, more correctly, encouraging my child to do so?)  My final thought on the matter is that when the "treasure" is good enough, the answer is a big "yes!" 

My New Dentist

I admit it - I have not been to the dentist in years, and my kids have never been to the dentist.  I have many excuses for this lapse in hygene including moving as often as I do, no sore teethe, feeling like I do a great job flossing, and my favorite - I just don't like going.  Well, as it is no longer just about my teeth, but about all the little teeth in my family, I finally made dentist appointments.  

Mitchell and I were up first and today was the day.  I will admit, I was nervous.  I have very weak teeth, and I knew it was not likely I would escape the cleaning without a second visit getting scheduled to come back and fix all that has gone wrong in my mouth.  Despite my general unease, I tried to make it sound exciting for Mitchell.  At first, he was excited to be going somewhere with me all by himself, but one look at that little room with all the equipment in it and he decided this was not where he wanted to be.  There is an aweful lot of complicated looking machinery in there, it's true.  

I went first to show him that it would not hurt and to show off what all the "scary machines" were for.  As I had to sit still facing forward with my mouth gaping open and full of all manner of cleaning and scraping and poking instruments, I couldn't really see him exactly, but I could see that the longer I sat there pretending to be having a great time for his sake, he was creeping farther and farther out of the room and into the hallway.  When I could finally turn my head and take a tiny peek at him, I found him huddled on the floor outside the room just barely peeking around the corner into the room to make sure the dentist hadn't finally finished me off.  

When it came time for him to climb up in the chair, he lost it.  He clamped both hands over his mouth and burst into tears.  "Later mommy, later!  I'll do it later!  I'm not ready!  I don't want him to look in my mouth!  I won't open it!"

It took some serious skill on the part of my dentist and myself, as well as plenty of goofing off with all the "tools" in there, trying to make him laugh and see it wasn't such a big deal, but we finally coaxed him to let him count his teeth and then bit by bit, brush them.  We almost had to reschedule, but in the end, we got his little chompers checked and cleaned.  

You'd think that after all the drama and fears and tears, he would want to forget about the dentist and his experience, but it has been the opposite.  He has been talking about it all day and even pretending to be a dentist himself!  I had to sit still for quite some time this afternoon and let him be my dentist.  He got all manner of tools out to work on my teeth.  Now we have no dentist tools.  We don't even have any doctor's tools, so he improvised.  I had quite the assortment of "tools" working on me - drill, measuring tape, blocks, a saw, flashlight, baseball, tinker toys, even part of a bbq.  Some tools were for "fixing," some were for "cleaning."  Others were for sucking the coffee off my teeth and fixing up my tongue and cheeks while he was in there.  He even labeled his shoes "dentist shoes."

It is good to know that while he seemed quite frightened and a bit traumatized by his first dentist visit, he came out of the ordeal with nothing but respect and excitement for the dental profession.