Staying Inside

I've actually got a few pretty good videos that I need to get posted up here, but I keep forgetting to post during the day. Libby is home still from having her surgery and, with all the added distraction, I keep forgetting that I have a very important job, posting embarrassing videos of my children, to do. But I'm at work and don't have the memory card with me, so I'll just have to get it later.

What I did want to share was the miserable last couple days that Gabe has had. Miserable days that, to my way of thinking, make it clear that the outside is a place best enjoyed through a quarter inch of glass.

The thing that happened yesterday, in a round-about way, can probably be blamed on me. Libby can't mow. She won't be able to mow for at least a few more weeks. And I hate mowing. Put these things together and you get a somewhat overgrown yard (it's only been a little over a week since she mowed last, so it's not THAT bad yet--but it will get there, believe me, it will get there). Because it was a little shaggy, the clover that pretty much covers our backyard had started to bloom. Gabe, being extraordinarily helpful, volunteered to take a felled branch to our branch pile in the very back corner of our yard for Libby.

Really, he's turning out to be a very helpful little guy. Just thought I should give credit where it's due.

Anyway, he wasn't wearing shoes. On his way back from the brush pile, he let out a yelp followed by a terrible wailing scream. He'd stepped on a bee.

I've never been stung by a bee. Wasps several times, but never a bee. So I can't even really relate.

But he was miserable for about a half hour after that. Libby was able to get the stinger out and I carried him into the house where he laid on the couch for the next hour. After that hour, though, he was over it. And later that night, when he had to pee and Libby was in the bathroom, he went outside, barefoot, into the backyard grass to do it, and he never thought twice about it. He's a tough little bugger, that's for sure.

Which is good because today, apparently (again, I'm at work so I'm just going off what Libby has been texting me all day), he stepped it up a notch. Or it would seem that way to me, anyway. A friend of ours took Gabe out fishing. While out there, Gabe did a fair amount of sitting around in the grass. And guess what's in grass: chiggers. And guess where chiggers like to go when people sit in the grass: crotches. And guess what Gabe has one of: a crotch. And guess where he got a whole mess of chigger bites: his junk.

Yeah. Chigger Junk. One of the most not fun things ever.

I'm just worried about what tomorrow might bring. I don't see how his body can take much more escalation.