4/2/03
Allie was freaking out this morning.
For the first night, in several nights, Allie didn't wake us up crying for her blanket, her dolly or to shoo the "black dots" that sometimes float around on the ceiling of her room (if anyone knows of some life threatening condition that manifests itself by producing black dots in a kid's night vision please let us know).
We all had a decent night's sleep.
This morning, as I started downstairs, I found Allie standing in the hall using her dolly to shield her eyes from the sunlight. Usually Allie stays in her bed until either Deb or I scoop her up and put her in our bed as we get ready for work. I knew that this break with routine meant that something bad was coming.
As I'm getting dressed, Deb is usually putting the finishing touches on her work look. The final act in this ritual involves two or three quick squirts of some kind of hair product that comes in a purple bottle. Allie likes to be in the bathroom so she can get a whiff of Deb's purple packaged hair product. This morning Allie didn't make it out of bed in time to breathe in a big dose of the, more than likely carcinogenic, hair tonic.
Allie freaked.
Allie started crying. She begged Debbie to, "put some more stuff on your hair." Allie cried all the way downstairs. She cried as she sat in her booster chair waiting for juice. We tried all of our usual moves to get her to stop crying. Nothing worked. Even as I drove away, Allie waved to me from the front window. From the street I could see that Allie's mouth was still in the shape of a scream as she waved. Her Mother stood behind her flashing me a look that said, "You've escaped. This time..."
Before I got to the interstate, I called home to see if Allie had calmed down.
Nope.
I could still hear her wailing about her missed opportunity to clog her nostrils with, what must be, the equivalent of glue mist. Deb put her on the phone. Allie lowered her volume a little, but continued to sob. I promised to do something special with her tonight if she would stop crying. She wasn't listening. She said, "I love you. Bye." The moment Deb got back on the line I heard Allie turn the volume back up. If she had said the name Ricky I would have sworn the ghost of Lucille Ball had invaded our home.
A little later, at work, I received this email from Debbie:
"Allie did stop crying after you called. I think it was a combination of your phone call and the power of mesmerizing children's TV. Plus, Mommy was ignoring her. I went up and got dressed and when I came down, she asked for juice in a princess cup and cereal and we got back to normal. By the time we got to Jessica's, she was hopping around like the Easter Bunny."
As I type this, I'm searching for a laboratory to test a sample of Deb's hairspray. I'm not saying there's anything like HEROIN in it. After all, why would anyone put HEROIN in hairspray? It would be silly to even suggest that there might be trace amounts of HEROIN present in the stuff. It's not as if my child behaved as if she didn't receive her daily dose of HEROIN this morning.
Now I'm just trying to figure out what special thing Allie and I are going to do together (kids never forget these type of statements made in the heat of battle). Maybe we'll head over to Wal-Mart and I'll let her get strung out in the hair products aisle.
Oh, one last thing. I like April Fool's day. I'm usually do a pretty good of keeping myself "fool-proofed".
This morning I read Jon's blog.
He got me.
Wait 'til next year.