Suppressing Blood Terror for the Love of The Freak

"DADDY!!!!!!!!!!!!"

The piercing scream came from outside my bedroom door. A terrified yell, mix with sobs. I woke up with a start and shot out of bed, throwing on my ample robe, crossing to the door, and flinging it open.

There stood The Freak (5). She was holding her hands to her nose. Blood was coming around her fingers. She's terrified of bloody noses and worse, has been getting them once a day or so, since allergy season started.

My bride, the blood queen, wasn't at home, gallivanting around somewhere else for the night. My specialty is barf. I'm scared of blood, broken bones, bumped teeth, loose teeth, bruises, forks stabbed in an eye, gashes to the bone, cancerous tumors that come and go over 24 hours, and anything else that happens to kids. But barf? Bring it on. I got that shit.

I had no choice. It was 2:30 in the morning and she had yelled for me.

I grabbed her hand, blood and all, and gently led her to the bathroom, grabbed a few Kleenex, and a baby wipe or two, put the Kleenex to her nose, scrubbed her hands with the wipes, and laid her carefully on her back, on Mommy's pillow.

She whimpered a little and added a little pressure. I went downstairs to the freezer, wrapped a few ice cubes in a wash cloth, and then applied that to her nose as well. 

In just a few minutes, it had stopped, commencing the next phase in bloody nose marathons - sniffle and ask Daddy 100 times if it's really done.

She stayed the night in my bed. 

I may have this down. But really, I can't wait until my wife is home. I'm going back to barf.

Analisse Knows English Better Than Me

We had just arrived home from grocery shopping.  The kids were helping bring the groceries in and, as she is wont to do, Analisse (3) decided to shed her shoes and run outside on the cold and wet sidewalk.  All she wanted to do was help me as long as I kept walking back and forth, from the door to the car, car to the door, bringing load after load of groceries into the house.

We walked up the the door for the last time and I leaned down and said, "Ani, make sure you wipe your feet.  It's wet out here."

"Noooo, Daddy!  I have fwip fwops on!"

"I know, Freak, but you still have to wipe your feet.  I don't want you tracking mud into the house."

"No!  Not my feet.  I have fwip fwops on!"

[Me (33), pausing in confused silence, wondering what to say next.]


"Oh!  Right...Ani, make sure you wipe your fwip fwops off."

"Yeah, Daddy.  Fwip fwops."

And she happily wiped her feet and ran off.

My Beard is Cheap Acupuncture

Earlier this morning, I grabbed Analisse (2), aka, The Freak, up in my arms and began chewing on her cheek and kissing her nose.  I like to grow my beard for a week or two, then shave it off nice and clean and start the process all over again.  I began doing this when I grew my first whisker and determined to maintain the habit when I read a study that stated that people who don't shave their beards every day die earlier than those that do.

I think I need to inform Aunt Gertrude.  She has an epic 'stache that needs to be trimmed daily.  

Anyway, I'm determined to provide their control by bucking the trend.

In the meantime, I'm kissing Analisse and she's screaming and giggling while pushing me away with all her might.  I giggled right along with her and then put her down so she could run away from me.

A few minutes later, Jack (4) began to whimper about some Legos that fell apart.  I crawled over to him and assured him that Legos fall apart all the time because they want you to put them back together (I learned this in another study that measured the feelings of inanimate object like Legos and Nerf bullets, the latter being petrified every time they were loaded into a Nerf gun.  The trick is to spread superglue on the tip of the bullet to shield their sense of flying through the air.  Just watch the eyes when you shoot).  He took it like a champ, smiled, and began to clip those bricks back together.

Out of the corner of my eye, I caught The Freak staring at me.  I looked her direction and noticed her cheek.  The one I had been chewing on and smooching.  It was covered in red dots that were spreading.  

Oops.  Guess it's time to shave.  Now I know why she was screaming and pushing me away.

I Am Not the World's Greatest Dad

I arrived home to the smell of steamy poop.  The dining room smelled like it.  The living reeked.  Kristine had just left for work and I needed to make supper.  I decided to breathe through my mouth and close my nose with my epiglottis.  You become a master at that exercise as a dad of six kids.  I'm as good at that as a woman doing kegels (in preparation for childbirth, of course).

We began training Analisse (2) to go to the bathroom on the potty a week or so ago.  She forced our hand by ripping off her diaper and marching to the toilet, opening it, peeing, wiping herself, and then notified us of her victory by slamming the cover down so hard, it shook the house.  I heard the noise and rushed into the bathroom, only to be greeted by a giggly little girl, so proud of her accomplishment, she was spewing out the words in perfect sentences:

"I went peeeee!!!!"

She got candy.

But that was pee.  She loved doing it.  She hated diapers - unless she had to poop.  Kristine sat with her a few days ago for a few hours, finally coaxing her to go one little turd.  She kept hopping off and coming back, hopping off, and coming back.  Finally, she succumbed and let out a little sheep ball of blackness.  That was the last time.

I found the pork chops in the freezer and walked up the basement stairs.  I could smell the fecal matter as I neared the top stair and went into denial mode, covering my nose again from the inside.  I defrosted the meat and sliced potatoes, hoping beyond hope, grasping at the elusive possibility that Kristine had left a diaper on her from nap time.  I convinced myself of this, even though Kristine had informed me on the second day of Analisse's potty training that she slept through nap time with underwear on.

I finished defrosting the chops, poured olive oil into the bottom of two glassware cake pans, covered them with salt and freshly ground pepper, shoved the pans in the oven at 350 degrees, and began to fry the potatoes.

Analisse ran past me giggling.

I laughed as she ran past me, momentarily forgetting that I was purposefully plugging my nose.  I breathed in deeply - and choked on the rancid air.  This was most definitely not a diaper issue.  She had gone in her underwear.  I knew it.  But, I had one last glimmer of hope and, grasping at it, I yelled out to the living room:

"Renaya!  Laura!  Frederic!  Change The Freak's diaper....NOW!!!"

Every good parent knows that you yell the names of all capable hands.  Only one will really end up doing the task, but she'll pummel the other two and force them to help her.  This way, if things go bad, they might, together, be able to get something done successfully, decreasing the chances that you'll need to pitch in and help where you would rather not.

I just wanted to cook supper!

The kids sprang to action, sitting up slightly in their resting positions in the living room.

"Now!! Dammit!!!" 

Now they knew I meant business and slowly dragged themselves out to the kitchen, chased The Freak down and I listened carefully as they laid her down in the living room, preparing to change the diaper.

I busied myself with the frying, counting down the six seconds that it would take to discover underwear vs. a diaper.  Sure enough:

"Ewww, Daddy!  YUCK!  Gross, Daddy!  This is disgusting.  Blecht!  Oh, nasty!!!!!"

My heart hit the floor.  

I rushed into the living room, scooped Ani up in my arms, walked quickly to the bathroom with a bucket of wipes and laid her down on the bathroom rug.  Her shirt and pants were fine as I peeled them off but I could see her underwear was a thick and slimy mass of soft squishy wonder.  I took them off slowly, yelled for a garbage bag (threatening no supper if I didn't get it in seconds), got it delivered to me in record time, cleaned up her butt, kicked her out of the bathroom, happy and giggling, and then focused my attention on the underwear.

The poop was halfway between a hard ball and diarrhea.  It covered the entire area of the back of her underwear.  I rolled up a wad of toilet paper and tried valiantly to scrape the contents into the toilet.

The poop wouldn't budge.

I began to turn on the hot sink water, thinking I would wash it off, hoping the majority would melt away or evaporate into hot steam, hoping I wouldn't plug up the p-trap.  The p-trap!  

Turning around, I tossed the underwear in the garbage bag, tied it closed, washed my hands, and texted Kristine that we needed to buy more underwear.  I returned to the kitchen and finished supper - arguably more flavorable at this point.