Handsome in Pink

     I kept Ian home from school today. I wanted to get him into the doctor and have her take a look at his hideous rash, maybe give us some stronger hydrocortisone cream. When she saw him, she said it was eczema caused by some kind of virus. Then she began asking about fevers, coughs, stomach aches, etc... She looked in his throat and ears and listened to his chest. She was writing out a prescription for a hydrocortisone ointment, when she stopped and looked at him again.
     "Let's do a throat culture just to be on the safe side," she said.
     I thought that was silly since he hasn't been sick, but she's the doc.
     His culture came back positive for strep. What the heck?
     No fever, no aches and pains, no sore throat or headache. Just germs. Bad ones. On our way to the pharmacy, I told Ian he was going to have to take the "pink" medicine.
     "No! That makes me puke! Remember? I puked on your head!"
     Indeedy weedy. How could I forget? Last time we did the amoxicillin thing, Ian gagged on it and puked a little on the floor. I bent down to wipe it up, and that's when the rest of the pink stuff decided to reappear. Right on my head. Yuck. I still shudder thinking about how it dripped down my face.
     We did better tonight. I told Ian that he had bad germs inside his body and that the pink medicine was like good soldiers and they were going to kill the bad soldiers.
     "Do they have swords?" he asked.
     "Really tiny ones. Now open your mouth. Here come the good soldiers..."
     We did tiny squirts of soldiers at a time in order to avoid the gag reflex.
     "Hey!" Ian cried. "These are pink soldiers!"
     "We may be pink," cried the soldiers, "but we fight like men!"
     My kiddo dissolved into giggles and the rest of the medicine went down without even a hiccup.
     There's no shortage of adventures with Ian for a son. While writing this entry, he came to me with blood dripping down his chin.
     "What happened?" I asked.
     And the answer of supreme intelligence, "I don't know."
     Somehow, my son managed to cut open the very tip of his tongue. It took a good twenty minutes for the blood to stop flowing. My freshly cleaned bathroom sink looked like a mini-slaughter house. Who knew tongues bled so much? Ian thought the whole thing was very cool. He could look in the mirror and watch the gruesomeness run out of his mouth and waterfall into the sink. I think all the earlier talk of soldiers with tiny swords must have sparked his imagination. The fight was unfolding right before his eyes.
     It took a bit of time for Ian to settle down this evening. He kept rolling around on the floor with his hands down his jammies. Then he'd stand up and run. It was hilarious to watch because he wasn't wearing a shirt and the pants were hiked up extra high to cover his arms, resulting in a mega wedgie. But the events of the day plus the Benadryl must have done their work. I put him in bed, he allowed me to kiss him goodnight, and he didn't try to pull the "I want Daddy!" stunt. He is sleeping soundly, oozing bloody drool onto his pillow.