Ya'shar

And my baby lost his first tooth.... (sniff, sniff, sigh)

I guess it was bound to happen, this growing up thing. But so fast??!! I'm just not prepared! I would be quite happy with a little growing up, however, when it comes to being assured that this child will not make poor choices that could drastically affect his health and safety.

That's right, a prelude to "the story."

I direct your attention to the very faint yet still detectable glimmer of mischief glaring out of his eyes in the other photo. Yes, I do think it accurately depicts a child, who not unlike his brothers and sisters, has a proclivity towards sticking things in his bodily orifices that most certainly don't belong there.

I take you back 3 years to when Ma-lak stuck the tail of a toy dinosaur in his ear, acquiring a nasty infection that gobbled up 2 weeks worth of antibiotics and most of my trust that he was old enough to know better.

Oh and let us not forget his little sister Ni'ke who stuck a barrette in her mouth and accidentally swallowed it, thus requiring surgery in Oakland to remove it from her esophagus and shortening my lifespan by 20 years in the process.

Rea's above story speaks for itself, although her choice of self-destruction has so far been limited to winding and whacking only her hair. (I purposefully did not mention the time she broke her brother's arm, since we're focusing on SELF-destruction here.)

Which brings us to my sweet little Ya'shar, who started having brown "goo" drain out of his ear about a week ago. I, being the un-excitable mom-nurse that I am attributed it to a likely infection from all the swimming that he does, and since he didn't have a fever or complain of it hurting, I did what any good do-it-yourself nurse would do and found some antibiotic ear-drops from one of Daryle's previous ear issues and treated him myself. The goo disappeared after a few days and I felt quite proud of myself.

Fast forward to the morning we were getting ready to leave for the airport (a week later) to take my sister back, and Ya'shar woke up with his ear draining brown nastiness again. I cleaned it out and restarted the drops, grateful that he had no fever or swelling in his neck and he said his ear didn't really hurt. Strange. So Monday morning arrives and his ear seems fine, but I wanted to take him to the ENT just to be sure, and of course he couldn't see him till Friday. So I took him into my regular family doctor's office to see one of her colleagues.

As soon as he looked in the "bad" ear and said, "Hmm." in that mystifying way, my heart sank, and knew what he was going to say.

"Well, it looks like there's something in there. A piece of paper or something."

It took several tries and two different tools to retract the wadded up piece of paper the size of a MARBLE from his ear, but he finally got it.

And what did Ya'shar have to say for himself? "I was bored."

Oh yes, he did.

This little adventure apparently took place at CHURCH nine days prior. The piece of paper? Oh, it was the church bulletin.

"Lord, open our ears to your Word." Amen.