Sand Plague

"Nothing is built on stone; all is built on sand, but we must build as if the sand were stone." -Jorge Luis Borges

I have a small sort of disorder which makes me hate powdery or gritty things on my hands.  I shudder to touch chalk, flour, or sand, in particular.  Which is why I had such a great time wiping the sand out of Maeve's mouth at the park last Friday.

The park by our house is a wood chip park, thank goodness.  But there's a park by the Target where I shop which is totally awesome, except that it has sand.  Ack.  But on Friday, I tried to be a good mom, and let Maeve really play and explore the very wet sand.  She was in it up to the elbows, and having a grand old time, and I was proud of myself for not jumping in and wiping off her hands every few minutes.

Until she put her hands in her mouth because her teeth hurt, and all hell broke loose.  She panicked because there was SAND in her mouth, which was clearly all my fault, as was the fact that it had to be removed.  By me.  I fished a wipe out of my backpack and set to work trying to get all the sand out of her mouth the hard way, doing my best not to keep saying Ew ew ew.

So Maeve and I learned valuable lessons.  My lesson was to make sure she has a pacifier when we visit the Sandy Park, and hers was to look at her hands before she puts them in her mouth.  I hope.  My other lesson was to tuck her shirt into her pants next time, since I had to clean a prodigious amount of sand out of her diaper afterward, which she also did not appreciate.

Grime in action