Last Full Day At The Cottage....

Tomorrow we’re leaving the cottage and heading into Falmouth for Brian and Meaghan’s wedding. So we’re in the mode of using up all the perishables so there’s very little that has to be thrown out. The fridge is just about empty save for some milk, yogurt, an apple or two and some soda. We’re in pretty good shape for tomorrow.

Some time during the night Nicky climbed into bed with Jennie and I and soon after that Alexis woke up screaming for Jennie. So Jennie left us and slept with Alexis. Nicky and I were woken up by Alexis and Thomas laughing hysterically playing some kind of game together in their beds. This next part might surprise you a bit. After breakfast we went down to the beach for some fun in the sand. We hung out there until Jim, Evan, and Ziad returned from their big fishing trip. One striped bass. That was their haul. They caught a bunch of small ones that were under the legal size so they had to be tossed back. While Nicky and Thomas watched Jim filet the fish, we cleaned off all the beach toys and packed up the stuff on the beach.

After lunch we packed all the beach stuff into the van and started to get things gathered up in the cottage for the trip home. Then it was off to one of the local stores to do some souvenir shopping. Then back to the cottage for dinner and more packing. The big crisis of the trip then happened. Thomas got a very bad splinter in his foot while playing outside on the deck. He came running inside and hopped on a chair and said something about hurting his foot. He’s a pretty tough kid (except when it comes to his brother hitting him), so for him to say something bothered him, we knew something was wrong. He had gotten the splinter on the bottom of his foot near his pinkie toe. It had broken off and there was a nice sized chunk left deep under his skin. It wasn’t a simple “pull it out” splinter. It was eerily reminiscent of a splinter I got as a child that eventually needed a doctor’s visit to get taken out since it had gotten extremely infected. I took him outside in the sunlight to get a better view and tried to take it out. He screamed bloody murder when I attempted to use the tweezers on him and I needed Jennie’s help to keep him still. We decided to stop torturing him so I sat him inside with his foot soaking in a bucket of water hoping to soften up his skin for later extraction. After we ate dinner, I got some sharper tweezers we held him down until I got it out. That had to be the longest 60 seconds of my life. The screams and tears were unbearable. I hated to hurt him like that, but it was for his own good. After I was all done and had the bandaid and medicine on his foot, he told me that he didn’t like me anymore because I hurt him so bad. But after a minute of calming down, he came back to me and as far as we could tell, his foot wasn’t bothering him any more. He was back to running around in no time, with no problems stepping on his foot like before. To make it up to him, I took him to the store (where I had to go anyway) to buy him some candy or a toy.

At the store, he picked out a Frisbee with stars and stripes on it for him and Nicky to play with. We got back to the cottage and met Jennie, Nicky and Alexis on the beach. Nicky was playing with the Frisbee and it rolled into the water and the waves sucked it out to sea. We looked for a few minutes but were unable to find it and it didn’t come floating back. On our way back to the cottage we stopped by Jim and April’s cottage so the kids could say goodbye to everyone there and we wound up hanging out there for almost an hour. As we walked into our cottage, Nicky apologized to me for losing the Frisbee. I told him that of course I wasn’t mad at him since it was an accident, but it’s really striking how big he’s getting. His concepts of various aspects of life are maturing so rapidly. It’s very bittersweet. He’s no longer our little baby and he’s growing up so fast. His first day of kindergarten in 2 weeks is going to be tough. For both Jennie and me.

Before I start crying, I’m going to end this post and go do some packing for tomorrow. It’s 8:49 now and Alexis is in bed sleeping and Thomas is on his way out. Nicky is watching “An American Tail” and looks like he could fall asleep any minute. But knowing him, he’ll be up ‘til 10:00 or so.