Gooey & the Chupacabra

"You'll never really know how much your parents love you until you have children of your own"... odd how that works out, and how true it seems sometimes. Even stranger that the person who said this was some guy at Saul Ewing that I never met, some random schlub that could be the reincarnation of Starkweather or Buddha for all I know.
Ok, I know that more than half of my posts are about the kids, but you'll have to suffer through... its little hard not to get caught up when it seems there isn't time for anything else. I'll start with the fun part though, to suck you in...
I'm home with Lily today because she has pink eye, and they won't let her into daycare again until she has been on meds for a while. Strange disease, pink eye. It doesn't seem to really ever do anything except make your eyes and everything they touch all gooey, but for some reason, daycare seems to treat it like the plague. As soon as she exhibited the first sign of goo, my cell phone was ringing, and I had to go and get her. She was pretty gooey, but in a good mood as always, and happily came crawling up to me with a small conjuctivitis infected stuffed rabbit stuck to the side of her face. As luck would have it, she also learned how to give kisses today. All afternoon she would play for a bit, then crawl over and want to be picked up... and all afternoon I gently peeled away Acme receipts and plastic dinosaurs from underneath her eyes and carried her around until she gave me one of her oddly-formed baby kisses on the cheek. Then, I would gently set her down again, boil some water, add a little rubbing alcohol in for good measure, and pour the mixture directly onto my face to ward off the onset of the goo...
Sam on the other hand, is unusually healthy at the moment... save one little problem... when Sam was younger, he was perfect. Well, not really, but he seemed like it. It was the little things in him that I was most amazed by... since everything was new - his smell, his eyes, his sounds, and the feel of his skin - he seemed perfect... and I dunno... fresh... unspoiled... A few months ago though, he ate something (we still don't know what) that he had a shockingly severe allergic reaction to. By the time we got in the car to go to the hospital, one eye was completely swollen shut, and the other not far behind. His tongue was swollen enough that he had trouble speaking, and his fingers were so big they would hardly bend. Needless to say, I drove really fucking fast.
I spent the day lying next to him in the hospital bed, and for some reason one of the things I remember most was how his skin had changed. He was passed out from all of the medication for most of the day, and I held on to him for a good six hours until he woke up. While he was swollen he was a little bumpy, like he was cold and stiff - but as the swelling went down his skin still felt different. Its hard to explain, but his skin didn't feel like a baby anymore, his arm felt like mine... weathered, tough... Over the next few days that went away a bit. It was a few days of some pretty hardcore drugs, and a handful more of Benedryl before the hives were gone... and it was weeks before I slept through the night. We still have to carry an epi-pen wherever we go, and I don't think there has been a day since that I haven't thought about it for at least a minute or two. For the most part, though, I'm over it. We've done all that we can do, seen a bunch of doctors, and are pretty prepared if it happens again. Just life, I suppose.. everyone has these things to deal with in one form or another, and I don't waste too much time playing out worst case scenarios in my head. Every once in a while it hits me though. On Tuesday I gave him a bath, and when I touched his arm I hit a rough goose-bumpy patch of skin, and it chilled me to the bone. It's sickening sometimes, how hard it hits me. Most days I have this amazing boy, and every once in a while, for a second or two, all I can see is this monster lurking inside of him waiting patiently to show itself again. Meanwhile, we wait, guardians of the Temple of Sam. Carefully watching the gates, syringes of epinephrine glinting valiantly in the sun, gooey pink eyes always watching... always watching...