Honestly, I can't believe the shit that happens around here lately. Skylights randomly shatter, I'm collapsing in the driveway, getting locked out of the house on a freezing-cold day, I get horrible, incapacitating infections, or maybe just heavy metal objects fall on my head and dent it. My head still hurts, by the way. I can barely even comb my hair.

Regardless, I'd just like to give a big "What the FUCK?" shout-out to the universe. Cut it out, will you?

Today's disaster happened to Adrian, not me. I don't know which is worse. It's pretty goddamn horrible when something bad happens to your baby. On the other hand, my kids rely on me to take care of them, so they are fairly well screwed when things happen to me, too.

It was very warm this morning, and the kids were happily playing in the backyard together. Somewhere along the way Adrian took his shoes off. He would have been wearing the shoes that *don't* come off easily, but one of those mysteriously disappeared last week. Argh.

Around noon I was finishing up washing a few dishes, and getting ready to go call the kids in to go to the Campbell Farmer's Market to do a little shopping. All of a sudden I hear a piercing scream from Adrian. The kind that strikes fear into a mama's heart.

I ran outside and he was on the deck in front of Dan's office on his hands and knees, screaming and wiggling backwards, trying to get off the deck. I knew right away that he was screaming because the deck had been baking in the sun, and was probably hot on his feet. I snatched him up and held his foot, only to feel a weird wrinkle on the bottom of it. Weird wrinkle?

I looked and his poor little foot was *already* blistered up, with a patch of white on the outer ball of his foot. I ran in to the bathroom sink and ran cold water over both his feet. Shit! How could the deck get THAT hot? It's not like it's made of sheet metal, it's composite wood/plastic! And it's not even that hot outside!

My poor baby screamed and screamed and screamed. I put his feet in a bowl of cold water and had Dan bring me a pair of earplugs, as my eardrums were in grave danger of being shattered. I couldn't get his feet to stay in the bowl though, he kept kicking in pain and splashing the water everywhere.

As soon as I took his feet out of the water though, things got much worse. I totally understood how he felt, having been through some bad burns myself. The second you take the burn out of cold water, that searing, flaming please-knock-me-out-until-its-over burn pain comes right back.

I put some thin socks on him, thinking that would help keep his feet wet and cool and also protect the incipient blisters from being scraped or broken, since he was kicking around a lot. After a while I took them off, since he kept pulling at them.

Finally I ended up tying ziploc bags full of cold water around his ankles, and that worked better than anything else. Adrian was still screaming bloody murder, but I briefly took the bags off and the screaming got a whole lot worse, so I put them back on. And I say that casually, like it was no big deal, but you try tying bags full of water around the feet of a screaming child in pain. Not a task for sissies, I'll tell you that. It took a while.

It was his naptime, and he had been screaming in pain for a solid hour, so once I got the bags tied back on, I rocked him in the rocking chair and he finally fell asleep. Still twitching and moaning though.

I had given him a big dose of ibuprofen at the beginning of the ordeal, so I was hoping that it would kick in at some point and give him some relief.

He slept two hours on my lap with the water bags on his feet, and just woke up a few minutes ago in a much happier state. His poor feet are a mess though. Big poofy blisters on the outer pad of each foot. His heel is OK, but the rest of his foot will take a while to heal.

So now what? Shit, he isn't going to be able to walk for a while, maybe a week. I wonder if he'll go back to crawling, or will he insist on walking and just scream a lot? I'll carry him around as much as possible, of course. Thank goodness for baby carriers. But now he's used to being independent, and moving around and playing without me.

Ugh, this is going to be a giant headache. On the other hand he has been out-of-control high-maintenance lately, pushing chairs and benches up to the counter and the kitchen table in order to get to all kinds of things that he shouldn't. Pulling dinner plates down, knocking over glasses of water, grabbing my cell phone, my keys...I haven't able to take my eye off him inside for more than a second without him causing some sort of of havoc. Outside has been a much safer place for him to be...until today.

Anyway, this might be a nice sort of respite, or pure hell for the next week. I'm not sure which. I'm just going to try to keep his feet as clean and dry as possible, and try to keep him from walking for as long as I can.

Jesus Christ...what next? Oh, pretend I never asked that question. I'm afraid to find out.

And yes, I do feel like a bad mom for letting him play outside without shoes on. Except I didn't know that he had taken his shoes off. Yep, I feel like a bad mom for that too. Sigh.

Photos of the feet forthcoming. Yikes, poor baby.