Bad Mum/Good Mum

On Friday we went to the Museum of Science and Industry. Tommy had a great time- he is especially taken with the train room (of course) and all of the tractors. Since we were going to be out all day I decided to put him in disposables. If we are cruising close to home he always wears cloth, but, in the interest of not having to carry the excess diaper weight we went disposable. Over the course of the day Tommy developed an infection in the diaper area. I'm sure it had already started (he is decidedly a gentile, if you catch my drift, and it probably started in a covered area that I wouldn't normally see), but, I wonder if it is a coincidence that the day he wore a different type of diaper it got really awful. Now, I noticed the issue while in the bathroom at the museum. He was lying on one of those fold-down tables located very inconveniently right next to the sinks- with no privacy at all. So, I couldn't exactly sit there and inspect the problem when I saw it. I had to wait until we got home, at which point it was late in the afternoon and he needed to go down for his nap. Thus, I didn't really get a chance to look things over until after the Doctor's office had closed for the day (and I thought it was a regular diaper rash anyway so I had no intention of calling the doctor).

That evening I had Jeff take a look, and he confirmed that things were awfully odd looking, so I messaged some friends with boys and realized it was probably yeast and that we would have to go to the Doctor.

Saturday morning I called first thing when the doctor opened and we got their next available appointment. We went in, the doctor comes in, takes a look, and then repeatedly emphasizes how bad the infection is, and rather accusingly asks when we noticed it. I told her just the day before, and we called right away, but it was clear that she didn't believe me. We were getting some pretty dirty looks from her. I could just hear the "bad parents, bad parents" running through her head.

Then, our darling child decided to speak up. He had been fairly enthralled with a poster on the door of some big kids eating healthy foods. He starts talking about the kids and the foods they were eating. The doctor was so surprised, and obviously impressed! She looks at us and says, "Wow, he's so verbal for a boy. I love how he says strawberries." I thanked her and acknowledged that we had been working on his vocabulary. For good measure I may have mentioned that less than a year ago he was diagnosed with a severe language delay. I felt pretty triumphant.

The moral of this story is: My children may run around slightly dirty, have raging untreated infections, and, if I am very lucky have broken bones that I don't know about (love you mom), BUT, they will do it with big vocabularies.