My Worst Enemy

Another great weekend under the belt!  Travis worked Saturday morning, so Aiden and I tried to take it easy.  Aiden wanted to play outside, so I figured I would attempt to work in the garden again.  I still had those dead tomato plants that need to be pulled up.  I put on socks, tennis shoes and wore Travis' Home Depot gloves.  I am going to a wedding this weekend and it will just be Aiden and I, so the last thing I need is some fire ant bites slowing me down.

I was in the middle of pulling up the second plant when Aiden starts screaming, "Ouch!  Ouch!" And it was fairly frantic.  He was looking at his foot so I immediately assumed fire ants.  Sure enough.  I am KICKING myself, for putting socks and full shoes on myself, but not on my son.  SO STUPID.  The fire ants were in ever crevice of his sandals.  I was trying to simultaneously smash the ants as I pulled that sandal off his foot.  After they were all mashed, I ran inside with him to wash his foot.  I don't know if that actually gets rid of anything, but I do know the cool water helps soothe the burning. 

Aiden never cried through the whole thing.  I was freaking out more than I think I ever have with anything related to Aiden, but I was mostly silent.  I just kept saying, "Ohnoohnoohno..."  After a thorough rinse, I saturated his right foot in Benadryl spray.  I blew it dry and counted the welts.  TWELVE BITES.  UGH.  I put socks and tennis shoes on Aiden before we went back outside.  While Aiden played in the garage, I went out to murder the culprits.  He had full on stepped in a giant fire ant hill.  I did a walk through of our yard and found dozens of hills.  I killed the hill by the garden and then called Travis to ask him to get something we can sprinkle on the entire yard.

I really wanted to keep Aiden off his feet, to prevent swelling if that was going to happen, so we took a walk to the park with him in the wagon.  When we got to the playground, I realized the majority of the playground was covered in fire ant hills.  The two playgrounds that we frequent near our house belong to schools that have been vacant since Hurricane Ike.  It is very obvious that they are not keeping up with the playgrounds.  Aiden was mad we had to leave, but I explained that there were lots of bugs that might bite him there. 

Travis was home soon after Aiden went down for a nap.  That afternoon we met the Ramby's at Palm Beach.  It was the last weekend we could use our season passes, so we wanted to take our last chance.  We got lucky and got front row seats at the wave pool.  That meant we got to sit under an umbrella with our feet in the sand while Aiden and Blair ran in and out of the wave pool.  PERFECT.  

It was dinner time when we left the park, so we stopped for dinner.  There is a new Chinese buffet that opened on the island that I've been wanting to try out, so we went there.  I wasn't impressed.  I know most people are not impressed by Chinese buffets in general, but I love them.  We used to eat Chinese food ALL THE TIME in Illinois. But we quickly turned to Mexican food as we moved closer to the border.  

Aiden got to bed 30 minutes late that night.  As we were laying him down, he started scratching at his ant-bite-ridden foot.  He has a habit of scratching mosquito bites as he falls asleep, causing them to eventually bleed.  I know how painful it is to scratch fire ant bites, so I went ahead and gave him a dose of Benadryl.  

He slept in until 7:15 the next morning!  That is a HUGE deal seeing as he has been waking up at 5:45 for a month now.  That's what time our alarms start going off on weekdays, so I'm sure that's what has started this horrible habit.  But I DON'T want to wake up at 5:45 am on weekends too.  Too bad we can't take him to the water park every afternoon!