I have the feeling that this blog will not go down in the annals of good parenting advice, especially after today. In fact if this latest episode doesn't have Children's Aid knocking down our door, then I will probably never again have to worry about them visiting us.
Grady reacts badly to mosquito bites, as do I. I think maybe he has a higher amount of tasty British blood. There was a period of a few days in the fall that he was getting more and more bites. He had to begin with, been spending quite some time outside and I put it down to the balmy October weather that we still had active mosquitoes.
One bite on his arm turned particularly nasty and when the limb swelled to twice it's normal size, I finally relented and agreed for Rob to take him to the doctor. I'm not heartless, but let's face it, this was the same boy that tried to stay home from school with menstrual cramps, so I kind of take the wait-and-see-if-it-drops-off-first approach before we do anything hasty. One round of antibiotics later and Grady's arm is back to normal, but new bites keep appearing.
Rob and I had a tête-à-tête to try and determine the source of these bites. We ruled out bed bugs, I think it would be more widespread and only Grady seemed to be afflicted. With four cats and a dog there is always the chance of fleas, and one of the cats does occasionally sleep on his bed, but the other cats sleep on the remaining beds, so again it doesn't explain why Grady is the only one with bites.
Just to be careful, we stripped his bed, boiled all of his bedding and his floor mat, zapped everything in the drier and then sprayed down the mattress and the rest of his room with industrial strength flea spray. Lo and behold the next day, three more bites had appeared, so we were totally flummoxed. Rob suggested perhaps hives instead of bites, but we couldn't think of anything that was recently introduced that Grady would be allergic to.
I finally came up with a brilliant idea and suggested that perhaps we should have Sid and Grady swap beds for the night. That way if Sid got bitten (assuming it was bites and not hives) then we'd know it was something in the bed, but if Grady got bitten then it was probably hives.
Rob explained the plan to Sidney, who was initially excited at the prospect at sleeping in her brother's room, but then the penny dropped and she turned on him accusingly "Hang on a minute, what if I get bitten?" It didn't take long for her to suss out my diabolical plan, and it would appear that Sid was not overly keen on the idea of being dished up as bug bait. Time to sweeten the pot - I told Rob to go back and offer her 25 cents for each bite. Normally that girl would jump through hoops for less, but tonight she wasn't going for it, and the negotiations began. She was prepared to offer herself up for five dollars a bite, which was a little steep in my book. After all Grady had counted a total of eleven bites. We finally agreed on a flat fee of five dollars to spend the night in Grady's room, with or without bites. Of course, it didn't take long for Grady to cotton on to this money making scheme, and he started bartering for his share of the pot. Tough noogies to him. We decided to wait and see what happened come morning, and of course if they both had bites then we were screwed.
Post script: The following morning, no bites on either child, and Sid was $5 richer. We may never find out what caused them, but they have stopped, so that is good enough for me.
No comments:
Post a Comment