Interpreter or Mob Boss?

The children went up to Grandma's house yesterday for a while in the afternoon. When Dane came home, he was holding a small plastic container and handed it to me. "Here, Mom," he said, "Grandma sent you some rootbeer upside-down-cake." It took me a minute, but I finally figured out that Dane had substituted rhubarb, a word he doesn't yet know, with rootbeer, a word with which he's very familiar (Grandma makes the kids rootbeer floats quite often). Of course, I called Mom immediately and thanked her for the rootbeer upside-down-cake.

Later in the afternoon, Daelyn came into my room to snuggle. He had been outside performing his daily self-imposed chore of "lawning the mow". (Someday I'm going to post a picture of him in his "lawning the mow" getup, which includes yellow rain boots, a yellow plastic construction hat and day-glo sunglasses.) He was tired and hot and just needed Mommy Time. As we were snuggling, he mentioned that it smelled bad outside.

"Is it my mountain of mulch?" I asked, knowing that it's deteriorating as we speak and quite odorous, at that.

"No, Mama, not your mulch. It was the sass suck."

???????? What in TARNATION is a "sass suck"?

I asked a few well-thought-out questions and finally got to the bottom of it. Daelyn was trying for "trash truck" but has trouble with blended consonant sounds (especially "t" and "r"), so he had substituted his old standby, "s". We spent the next 20 minutes working on t-rash and t-ruck, separating the "t" and "r" to help him form both consonants individually.

I also noticed, while snuggling, that he seemed warm. Took the temp and, yup, 101.5. I gave him a dose of grape liquid Tylemol before his nap, and he complained horribly about the taste. My other two kids prefer the grape taste and, in the past, we've looked hard and long for GRAPE. Now, Daelyn doesn't like the grape - all we had.

After dinner, his temp started going up again. We told him he needed more Tylenol and he flatly refused. So as to not confuse him about who's in charge, Daddy and I forced the issue, using a syringe to shoot it into his mouth. He then took several sips of milk. We were pretty smug, thinking we had won this battle, when purple milk began seeping out of the corners of his mouth. He refused to swallow and, eventually, spit the sips of milk laced with Tylenol out on the floor. Daddy decided he didn't need medicine badly enough to go through this.

Later, after preparing for bed, I discovered Daelyn stretched out in the middle of our bed, sound asleep and hot as Hades. He roused as Don and I were piling in and began talking with us. We once again told him he needed medicine. NO WAY!!!! We tried every angle we could think of, even pulling the name of our much-loved and authoritative Pediatrician out of the hat and telling Daelyn the doctor would want him to take it. No luck. Finally, Don sent me to the kitchen to get the Blue Raspberry Advil and mix it with 1/2 t. of Children's Benadryl for the little guy. I added about 1/2 t. of honey to the mix, stirred it with a toothpick, and took Daelyn his cocktail. I held him in my lap with his head leaning back against my arm and Don held his hand, ostensibly to provide moral support but, more likely, to keep Daelyn from knocking the medicine out of my hand and all over the bed (we've been this route before). I forced the first sip through clenched teeth (his and mine) and, once he tasted it, he opened up and took the rest. Afterward, we were snuggling again and I was brushing his hair with my fingers. "Thank you, Mommy," he said. It was worth the battle.

Any of you single men out there that are auditioning women as potential spouses, make sure you add to your list of needs someone who's bilingual and a linguist, a great interpreter, had a secret life as a hit-man with the mafia, has been to Pharmacy School, and was, at some time in her life, a pro-wrestler. And, of course, still can snuggle with the best of them - all essential job skills.