Owen and the Roach.

In not-my-proudest Mom moment, my son ate a roach yesterday.

In slow motion I realized what was happening, and proceeded to yell "Oh! Oh!" while scooping up my 8 month old, holding him at arm's length, putting him down again, grabbing a kitchen towel, and trying to do a clean sweep of his mouth with the towel because goodness knows I wasn't sticking my finger in his mouth for that one. I recovered about one leg and part of the thorax (is that a thing?)

As I was sweeping out screaming Owen's mouth with a towel and intermittently yelling myself, Claire in her 40 year old spirit said calmly, "Mom, it's okay. God made roaches."

Over the next two hours I kept repeating, "I can't believe that happened. I'm going to throw up." Finally Claire offered her own perspective. "Mom, it's not as bad as if he ate a marble and stuck a bead up his nose."

She was right.

Finally I said, "It's okay. I mean, people in other countries eat roaches, right?"

"Yeah," Claire agreed. "People who don't have any other food eat roaches."

Averi Kate chimed in. "Yeah, they eat 'em and then they kill 'em!"

As I was finally beginning to recover (Owen had long since recovered - he was fine as soon as I stopped wiping out his mouth with the kitchen towel), toward the end of supper, Averi Kate spoke up one more time.

"Hey Mom, I think Owen wants some more roach."

The end.