Family (Mis)Adventures

So, yesterday my wife and I took our two kids to the water park to celebrate my son's seventh birthday a bit after the fact. It was his first time at the big park.

(On the weekend, we had taken him to see his first movie in a theater, Monsters v. Aliens. It was at one of the local dollar theaters and he did a great job. Stayed in his seat, didn't talk through the dialogue or ask an endless stream of questions, didn't ask to go to the bathroom, etc. His only insistence was that he get some popcorn, because "I know from watching movies at home that people in movie theaters always have popcorn.")

He did a great job, enjoying the large wave pool in particular, going back multiple times. Dad, who isn't quite as big a fan of waterparks as his wife or daughter, did okay outside of the big tube rides. Waiting in line a long time for a ride that ends up being over in a flash just isn't my thing. Maybe it reminds me too much of my early sex life, I don't know.

And naturally at the exit of a ride called the Viper, I ended up coming out of the chute backwards and flipped upside down, smacking my head on the concrete floor of the shallow exit pool hard enough to raise a lump, give me a headache, and make me dizzy--but thankfully not enough to cut my scalp or result in a concussion. I also somehow managed to cut my foot. The next hour or so was not so fun-filled for me, but the kids continued to have a good time.

So, all things considered, I took one for the team and my son had a great time.

That night my daughter was helping her mom prepare dinner when she sliced off part of her fingernail while peeling some ginger. Finger bleed a lot, so there was a bit of trauma as that got squared away with gauze and bandaids.

Then this afternoon my son came screaming into the house. At first I literally thought he had severed an artery or set himself on fire. Turned out it was his first bee sting, on the bottom of his foot. He shrieked in my ear for a good two minutes straight (Ow! OWW! AHHH! OWWW!) as I sat him in a chair and my wife brought me the tweezers to pull the stinger out. Then he howled a bit more when she put the baking soda on the sting, and I put some ice on the sting to calm him down.

This evening he said at dinner, "I can't even remember what the sting felt like."

It has been an adventurous couple of days. Hopefully we will all heal up. :-)