Ants in his pants.

Literally. Clark got some fire ants in his pants yesterday, and his first encounter with the little turds was not a good one.

Since the weather plummeted down to an astonishing 93 degrees yesterday, Clark and I took advantage of it by going for a nice stroll about two miles down the road to a nearby neighborhood that has a wawa (lake) and gucks (ducks). Clark eventually started getting ancy and squirming around to get out of the stroller, so I let put him down to run around in a ass (grass) field. Note: italicized words are Clark's version. How impressed are you with his increasing vocabulary?

At some point as he was frolicking through the ass field pretending to fly like a boyd (bird), he stepped in an ant bed. Once he realized the little ants were crawling all the way up his leg, he ran to me screaming bugs, bugs, bugs, and even though he didn't completely freak out at first, his mom did. Those little boogers were everywhere, including up his shorts, in his diaper, all over his hands and arms and in his shoes. It was so sad because he started crying as I was slapping them off and stripping him down but I knew it was too late. There were already huge welts forming on his skin and I had to hold back tears. Seeing your kid in pain has got to be one of life's most miserable feelings.

The two mile walk back to our house was much longer than I remembered, and apparently the temperature had increased by 40 degrees during those few minutes because I started sweating uncontrollably as Clark's screams got louder and louder in the stroller. It was an unfortunate situation that I never want to repeat.

The good news is that the bites did not affect him at all once we got home and I put some cream on them. He would just point to his legs and say bugs. Even though it is painful just to look at, he has completely forgotten they are there.

The bad news is that in the process of swatting them off his little body, the fire ants must have landed on me and bit the crap out of my ankles too. Those little suckers hurt and I am miserably scratching a hundred little bites every second of the day. So what I've learned about myself through this whole ordeal is that I'm a pansy, I don't handle emergency type situations very well on an emotional level, and a 19 month old has a higher pain tolerance for ant bites than me. When it was all said and done, I'd have to say it was quite the humbling experience.