There's got to be an easier way!

Bedtime was eventful tonight. We've been talking about Emmett moving into the front bedroom for weeks, and now that Henry is sleeping full-time in the boys' room, it seemed like a good time. I cleared enough out of the room to put in a mattress, so Emmett is sleeping in his own room tonight.

Then while flossing his teeth, I realized that Emmett has pink-eye. Fortunately I have a stockpile of pink-eye meds from the last time so we started eye-drops immediately. We talked a little bit about how contagious it is, and how we should all make sure to wash our hands more often for the next day or so. We also figured out where Emmett picked it up - their summer Spanish classes with about 8 kids started last Thursday.

After Luke and Henry were in bed and Emmett was in the other room, Luke started to cry and hide his face in his pillow. I asked him what was wrong and, of course, Luke wasn't talking. I brought him out to the rocking chair to talk, but I did pretty much all of the talking. I asked him if he was upset that Emmett was sleeping in another room, but he didn't make a peep. So on I went, talking about when Luke first moved into the room with Emmett, and now Henry is moving in etc. Luke asked where Emmett would move when Luke was older and moved into the front room. I guess he's noticed that things that happen to Emmett typically happen to him a little later. We talked about the room in the basement, and Luke pointed out that a mattress would fit right in the front room!

Finally, after all that, Luke said something about pink-eye, and I suddenly realized that he was worried about catching it! So I began my second "reassuring the child" speech of the evening, this time with the topic of contagious diseases. We talked about how the first dose of antibiotics was killing lots of bacteria right now. We talked about how by tomorrow, most of the bacteria would be totally dead. We talked about washing hands. We also talked about how the eye-drops do not hurt, and getting pink-eye really isn't that big of a problem. Luke was also worried about going back to Spanish class - he had trouble reaching the sink to wash his hands last time. I promised to get him some hand sanitizer and at least he was out of objections so he went to bed.

It would be so much easier if Luke would just tell me what was bugging him!

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Thanks, Emmett.