Reaching Those All Important Milestones...

This past week was a pretty interesting week for us. We managed to accomplish one of childhood's most noted milestones. (Well - okay - that's a bit overly dramatic...)

Being the amazing parent that I am, I was piled up in bed sound asleep while my darling Kira ventured out to our sun porch to play. Mind you, she very carefully avoided waking me up for fear that I would deny her request to go out an play. Keep in mind also that Kira is a very early bird and Mom is NOT an early bird at all.

All of a sudden I am awakened - quite rudely - by the screaming of my traumatized child standing directly in front of me. How in the world she managed to get from the sun porch all the way to my bedroom without me hearing her until she was in my face, I will never know.

Kira was wailing and crying about how I had told her that they wouldn't hurt her or something of that nature. Mind you, I was in a sleep fog and she was bawling loudly.... so it was somewhat difficult to comprehend what was going on.

When the whole story is told, Kira had been stung by a carpenter bee. We have dozens of carpenter bees around her and Kira has spent hours playing with them - even letting them crawl all over her - and this was our first painful experience. Either she had found a female carpenter bee, (the males don't sting) or the bee bit her with it's pincers that it has at the front of its face. There was no way to be certain, but it appeared very much to be a sting. A bit of ice and a lot of love later, then Kira was just fine. She did, however, insist on watching the Natural Killers Hornet movie several times during the rest of the day. I will never understand that particular fascination...

In honor of Kira's major milestone of  having received her very first bee sting, I decided to find some information about treating bee stings.

1) If there is a stinger present, it is important to remove that stinger as quickly as possible. (Be thankful that the presence of the stinger means that the little monster that hurt your precious child will certainly receive the most powerful kind of justice. After all, with the stinger usually comes the entrails and without the entrails, the bee is sentenced to death for his crime.)

2) Wash the area and apply a bit of ice to help with the pain and swelling. (Those cute little boo boo packs are awesome for icing up a sting.)

3) Keep a very close watch on the victim to be sure there is no allergic reaction. This is most important for first timers because how can one be sure they are not allergic until they are exposed... (The risk of having an allergic reaction goes up if one of the parents are allergic.)

4) Tylenol or Ibuprofen can help alleviate some of the discomfort.

5) Apply liberal amounts of love and attention to the sting victim. While a bee sting may seem like a tiny little thing to us adults, it can be very traumatic to your child. (Especially when that child had spent hours and hours lovingly playing with the bees **shudder** and doesn't quite understand why this particular bee failed to realize that she was a friend and not the enemy.)