Jack got stung by a wasp today.
We had been playing outside all morning, and it was time for him to take a nap. Lewis was gone helping his brother, so Poppy got to join us for reading a book and singing a song before Jack went to sleep. Just as we got settled onto his bed with a book and both kids on my lap, Jack said, "Ow."
Now, Jack has not yet learned how to manipulate with the word "ow." I'm sure the phase where he'll say that word at any and everything is coming, but we're not there yet. So when he says "ow," he means "ow."
He had scraped his knee outside, so I looked to see if it was rubbing somewhere. And that's when I saw the wasp. Crawling on his shirt was the biggest, most menacing wasp that every existed*.
My first inclination was to swat it off of Jack and hightail the both of us out of there, possibly screaming. But remember that Poppy was with us, and as talented as she is, her neck muscles are still a touch weak and hightailing anywhere with an infant is typically less than recommended.
So I gently slid out from under Jack, placed Poppy on the bed...and watched as the wasp buzzed down from Jack's shirt onto the bed and towards my daughter.
If I were a cursing woman, this would have been a prime time to quote Mrs. Weasley in the seventh Harry Potter book as she engages in battle with Bellatrix Lestrange.
I snatched Poppy off the bed, shuttled Jack out the door (who was looking curiously at his arm where the wasp had stung), and looked back in time to see the wasp zip over the window blinds.
Naturally I did the logical thing. I shut all the other doors upstairs so it couldn't get in any of those rooms. Did I shut Jack's door effectively trapping the wasp and preventing it from traveling through the open areas in my home? Don't be silly. That would be preposterous.
By the time it occurred to me to maybe do that, I couldn't see the wasp on the blinds any more. So we left the house completely. I took the kids outside and called Lewis to come rescue us.
Meanwhile, I examined the sting on Jack's arm. The last and only time I was every stung by a wasp, it had gotten stuck somehow in the waistband of my skirt and stung me about half a dozen times before I got it out, so I wasn't sure how a single sting should look. Plus Jack has allergies**, the potential for a reaction was there. It looked okay, though, and he wasn't acting weird, so I let him run off and play.
Lewis arrived along with his brother and asked me where the wasp was. "I know where it's not," I said. Apparently he found that less than helpful.
But as it turns out leaving Jack's door open neither hurt nor hindered the location of the wasp. Lewis found it still among the window blinds. His brother joined him in the room and they shut the door, probably the keep my children away from the trauma of watching them dispatch of the creature. I don't know what their methods were, but it sounded gruesome.
The moral of the story is, if you or any of your kids are going to get stung by a wasp, do so on a Saturday when your husband can (relatively easily) come home and rescue you. And if you're my neighbor, maybe spray for wasps.
*Its stature may have since become exaggerated in my mother mind.
**Although just to peanuts now. He's officially outgrown the milk allergy - yay!
