The Super-Gross Dinner

This terrible fuzzy picture shows the aftermath of the least fun dining out experience we have had in the last year or two. We were at ChaChaCha, and Zach notices some dirt in the corner of Little D's eye. I had noticed it before as well, but left it alone, figuring we could wash his face with a wet washcloth at bedtime. When I picked him up from school he was extra sandy from a particularly exuberant time outside. I washed him off when we got home, but missed the dirty eye-booger in the dark of the bathroom.

So I take a damp napkin edge and try to grab the eye dirt, and it doesn't budge - in fact, it acts incredibly stuck. Little D is being an amazing trooper and cooperating to the best of his ability, keeping still, trying to both keep his eye open and his eyeball focused away from my napkin. I pull down on his lower lid to uncover something that I could not wrap my brain around. Zach said when he first saw it, he thought it was a giant dead bug that had gotten lodged in his eye. My first thought was that it was some horrible blood clot and that he was going to start having a stroke or something any second. The cantina style lights were not helping, but upon very close inspection, I saw it was a pile of sand. More like a sac of sand, because the pile of sand was surrounded by mucus-y gunk, which I am sure Little D's body was working on to protect his eye. I must mention at this point that Little D and I had been together for almost 4 hours, with no complaints or eye-rubbing.

So then I try to keep my cool as I try to grab the sand with my napkin, feeling like I am raking this coarse paper across his eyeball each time as I fail again and again. The little sand globber is STUCK. I can see the napkin touch it, start to pull on it, and then the force of the eye mucus is just too strong. At this point D is SCREAMING, and trying trying trying to help as I am sandpapering his eyeball. I tell him that we can wait until we get home (since it obviously wasn't bothering him before we noticed it) but at this point he can see how grossed out both Zach and I are about it that he now NEEDS it out of his eye, more than he needs me to stop scraping at his eye. I take him outside to the patio seating (which is thankfully empty) so that he can scream in peace while I make my final attack. He was an amazing trooper the entire time. He screamed because I am sure it hurt like hell, but never turned his head away or tried to stop me.

Finally, it slithers out like a grotesque sand-slug. It was way more disgusting than I can describe. Take a good look at that blob on the napkin, and think of it tucked in the lower lid of my tiny boy's eye.
Isn't motherhood so very glamorous?