Buzz!

Tonight's Amelia moment was her excitement over what they learned in Science. We talked about it most of the evening. It started off with her usual hinting about what her favorite subject is, followed by a hundred "Guess whats" and "You'll never guesses", and then a few hours of discussing her science topic. "Mommy! You'll never guess what we talked about in science today!" "Umm...dinosaurs?" "Mommy...don't be ridiculous. OK, I'll give you a hint. It's an animal and I'm allergic to it." "Dogs?" "Mommy! I'm VERY allergic to it." "Ohh...bees?" "Yup! It was so cool! Did you know there are some bees without a stinger? Those would be my most favorite, of course, because...well, you know...they couldn't sting me." "Did you talk about all kinds of bees? Like wasps and hornets?" "Mostly we talked about honeybees..." And the rest of our night would go between laying on the floor playing with our nativity scene Little People and hearing random facts about bees. I learn a lot from my little first grader, and her favorite subject is science. It used to be recess and lunch when she first started school, but her teacher, Ms. D has really encouraged her passion for science, which I think is wonderful! I love the things that we talk about, and I've loved all of the things that I've gotten to learn about just from listening to Amelia talk and also from the google sessions that are required after. We finished the evening with our regular routine, intermittantly talking about bees. I listened to her speak excitedly about all the things she'd learned about bees and it made me smile. She is pretty allergic to bees and her reaction gets worse each time she is stung. She got stung by one about a year ago. She was playing outside barefoot and stepped on one in the clover. I brought her in the kitchen and pulled the stinger out. I washed it and made a meat tenderizer paste and she went on her way playing. About an hour later we did bath and she told me her foot hurt. Not my proudest mom moment, but I patted her head and told her she was fine. She got out of the tub and was hopping on one foot. I rolled my eyes and told her to stop it, that it wasn't that bad. We read our stories and we were walking to her room and she asked me to carry her because her foot hurt. I shook my head and told her that she was fine and she needed to stop. She crawled to her bed and I started to cover her up and tuck her in when I noticed her leg. Her foot was swollen so badly that you couldn't tell where one toe ended and the other began. He foot was at least three sizes bigger than it should be. It was hot to the touch and her leg was red all the way up her leg just above her knee. I called my parents who came and stayed with Emerson and my dad and I took off for the ER. I felt awful! They checked her leg and checked her lungs and made sure she wasn't having any respiratory distress. And the doctor wrote me a prescription for an EpiPen. I smiled and told him that we already had them stashed all over the house and the car and my purse and...he smiled and said, go fill it. You'll need them! So I did... When I took Amelia in for allergy testing, they did the bees first. It's just through a simple blood test (which Amelia HATES!). The results of that blood test indicated that Amelia is very allegic to bees...all six types they test for, except for yellow jackets, which the allergist said he would guess that was a fluke, and that I shouldn't let her get stung by those either! Not like I'm going to ask the bee what type it is if it stings her. So, of course right after allergy testing comes summer and how many stings did we get? Ugh...so scary. She never goes barefoot anymore. But, she didn't see the one that was getting a drink on the water faucet handle when she grabbed for it. And who would have thought there would be a hornet in the pile of stuffed animals in the playroom that stung her three times. And then there was the honeybee that climbed into her boot while we were playing outside. Poor kid! Luckily, our reactions haven't warranted an EpiPen injection...yet. But like I said, each sting gives us a worse reaction. And the type of bee definitely matters to her. Like the hornet? Three times on the leg and we only got welts on her leg right around where the stings were and it didn't do much more than that. The honeybee? One sting on her ankle...the stinger was still in it so I scraped it off with a credit card (which is a trick the allergist told me. It takes the stinger out without leaving the poison behind in the skin.) I packed it with meat tenderizer, elevated her leg, put ice packs on it, and gave her Benedryl immediately and it was still a bit scary. She gets so swollen and you can watch and see the poison creep up her leg. So, having her learn about bees and talk about them excitedly was amazing to me. She kind of hates them and is scared of them. So, I'm tucking her into bed tonight and she's throwing some more bee facts at me. I smile and say, "Hey Amelia, it sounds like you are really interested in bees." "Yeah, I am! They are awesome!" "So, do you think learning about them makes you less afraid of the bees?" "Mommy, what are you talking about? I'm not afraid of bees!" "You're not?? What about this summer when you refused to go outside for a while after you got stung because you didn't want to risk getting stung again." "Oh, that. I'm not afraid of bees! I think bees are cool. I'm just afraid of their stingers!" I smiled at my girl and told her she had a very good point! She rolled her eyes at me and said, "Good one mommy...get it? Point...stinger..." I shook my head, kissed her and told her I loved her. She said it back and rolled over and went to sleep. Her statement made me giggle (not the corny joke...the not being afraid of bees, just their stingers) but then, like usual, it made me think. And the more I thought about it, the more profound the information I got from it. Just think about it for a minute. What if we compartmentalized our fears and stressors like that for everything. Would it make life simpler? Easier to deal with? What if I thought hard about my fears and rather than hating and fearing the entire bee, I was just afraid of the stinger? Would we give things a second glance if we didn't fear the big picture, but just the little pieces that actually cause the hurt and pain. I feel this thought goes much further than just the things we fear. What about arguments we have with others? Disagreements we have. I know that in discipline, we often tell our children, "I love you, but I don't love what you did" or something similar along those lines. The bee thing is the same idea. Don't fear the whole bee, because if you do, you may miss the good things about the bee. And when you really stop and think, you find out why bees sting in the first place, to protect themselves. So, when Amelia brought up the fact that there are bees that don't have stingers, I told her I was sad for them. Amelia looked at me and asked me "why?" I told her because they didn't have a way to protect themselves, what if something was trying to kill them. "Umm, Mommy...they have a backup plan. They can just fly away! Which I would really prefer because you don't need an EpiPen for that!" True story, Amelia...luckily Amelia has her EpiPen as backup. And we have our own "EpiPens" to fix the crises that we face day to day. But as we are grumbling and complaining and worrying about what might happen, we need to remember the bee. Look for the good, and instead of blaming the whole bee, just blame that stinger. It hurts, but just for a little bit, and there is much more to the bee than that stinger!