Wood, Sweat, and Ticks
By the end of this Fall, our kids will be firewood stacking professionals. We’ve been cutting and splitting some firewood from my father-in-law’s property down the road, and everyone has a job to do. Mr. Fix-It runs the chainsaw and I work the log splitter and help toss pieces into the back of the truck.
The Cowboy was in the back of the truck stacking with his brother.
The Ladybug gathers up the smaller pieces and tosses them into the truck to be stacked. She also helps unload at stack when we get back home.
We're careful about the Speedracer in the back of the truck by himself when the tailgate is open.
The Cowboy hauls the chunks from the tailgate and stacks them in the bed. After Irene, Speedracer was stacking too, but those pieces were smaller and the tailgate was closed.
That's a pretty neat stack for a 4 year old!
This time Speedracer’s main job seemed to be drinking water. (His secondary job was sitting around asking for water.)
Well, he was sweating like everyone else anyway.
They got to take some breaks to play too. Those big, downed trees were perfect for climbing and crawling on, hunting up big black beetles, and playing make-believe. I overheard something about “falling in the water” and “crawling like puppies” and one reference to snakes that got my immediate attention for no reason.
You couldn't ask for a better jungle-gym.
Unfortunately, when we got home to wash up, we found out that the kids had brought some little tagalongs home with them. Actually, a lotof little tagalongs. The Ladybug and Speedracer both had 10 little ticks on them. Not the big, disease carrying, deer ticks, but the teeny-tiny little wood ticks that you can practically only see because their skin is soooo fair. Mr. Fix-It had one.
The Ladybug worked hard "doing wood" on Saturday.
And the Cowboy, my little adventurer, my little trailblazing reptile hunter, took the prize with 39–yes 39!–ticks. The bug spray didn’t seem to make the slightest difference! A lot of them were still crawling when we found them. Ladybug and Speedracer only have one or two actual bites. The Cowboy has a bunch and they itch really, really bad, but it’s still only about a quarter of the number of buggers we found. We’re bathing him in Aveeno oatmeal baths and I’m keeping him slathered in Cortizone, but if anyone else knows of some home remedy that works better, please let me know!
Meanwhile, we’ve got another load or two to go before we’re done for the winter. What were you up to this weekend?
Ugh – ticks! They make me shudder 🙁
We have dog ticks and lym-deer ticks – and we’ve found both on the girls (and the dogs!!) all summer. We finally found a spray that seems to repel them, which made me feel better!
My girls haven’t ever itched from the bites – once we got them off we cleaned the area with alcohol and then put some liquid Benedryl on the sites and they were fine.
I didn’t even think about trying alcohol! Good idea!
What great pics! Nothing like a family working together! If there was only more of that in this day and age.
Thanks! We do work together a lot and I have to say I think it’s quite bonding for our family.