Comedy of Errors

The whining, the screaming, the crying - and that's the girl who's not sick!

Monday afternoon, with B sick sick sick (we found out yesterday it was strep, he's now on antibiotics and feeling much better, but as of Monday he just had a very high fever and felt like crap) and A at a birthday party (another mom from school took him and he did great without me there - yes!), J decided it was time to just cry. She cried if I talked to her, she cried if I didn't. She screamed if I ignored her and screamed louder if I gave her attention. It was a very long day, and no, she wasn't sick. She was making me sick, but she herself is fine.

After offering a huge list of different things that we could do, I finally silenced her with the offer of painting her nails. We had never done that before, so I hoped the novelty of it would not just silence her but actually make her happy. I was half right.

J sat on my lap and quietly watched while I painted her nails. She seemed to love the attention and I thought I had found the solution, the antidote to her unhappiness. It was short-lived. She soon touched a nail and became very upset that some of the polish was now on her finer and the nail was very smudged. I tried to fix it, but then two fingers on the other hand got stuck together when the nail touched the other finger. By now she was crying hysterically again. So I ran to the closet to get the polish remover (and almost sent an emergency call to anyone to run out and buy us some more nail polish remover when I couldn't find it, but luckily I eventually located it).

I calmed her down again when I started removing the polish. Okay, no big deal. Until she touched her still damp finger to her tongue and began gagging and crying hysterically at the awful taste. I grabbed her and brought her to the bathroom were I got her to drink a lot of water and rinse out her mouth as much as possible. Then we washed her hands multiple times so she wouldn't get the smell or taste in her mouth again.

Wow, what a winning idea painting her nails turned out to be.