Half Changed World

Skip this one if you’re squeamish.

The boys now have their own rooms, but have been moving back and forth between the two, sometimes in their own rooms, sometimes both in one.  Last night, D asks if he can sleep with N in N’s
bed.  N says ok, so I say sure, as long as you guys actually settle down and get some
sleep (because they both have school today).

N is fussy in the night, and we’re both up a few times to check on him.  At one point, I hear him crying, but let T go downstairs since I handled the last one.  But then I hear T saying "oh my god" and then asking "what did you have for dinner?  Did you have ketchup for dinner?"  I know we didn’t have ketchup, so I figure I had better get downstairs.

N has thrown up.  Not onto D, but
onto his bed and the floor (which has light colored carpet).  And it’s bright red.  And we can’t figure out what it could be.  What it looks like is pomegranate seeds, but N says that he didn’t have any at school.    So we’re a bit freaked out, but not too panicked, because it doesn’t really look like blood. 

So
we send D to sleep in his own bed, and change N’s pjs and
sheets and start cleaning the carpet.  But as soon as we put oxyclean
on the stain, it turns blue.  Suddenly I realize that what we’re looking at is the blackberries N ate for dessert.  Blackberry juice is an indicator, so in the acid of his stomach, it
turned bright red.  And the oxyclean is a base, so it turns it blue
again.

I’ve promised the boys we’ll experiment with some mashed up berries so they can see the effect in a less gross context. 

(BTW, the oxyclean did a fabulous job of removing the stain overnight.)

This entry was posted on Thursday, June 7th, 2007 at 5:58 pm and is filed under Parenting. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.