Friday, February 1, 2008

Fireworks In Our Ears

The other day my "voo doo nutjob" friend Kathy blogged about using hydrogen peroxide to help ward off a cold. Well I had never heard of this so I checked out the link she had and read a little bit about it. One of the comments said it also helped with wax build up in your ears so being the thinking girl that I am I thought to myself "Man Leighton always has a lot of wax in his ears, and must not be able to hear very well because he is always yelling. Maybe I should try this on him." So off to Wal-mart I went and spent a whole $1.93 on a bottle of hydrogen peroxide and two medicine droppers. (thanks Denny for the heads up on the dropper issue :)

So last night after I gave the kids their baths and was drying Leighton's hair, I told him what I was going to do. By now Zia was getting her hair dried and I thought "I probably ought to do her ears too, because she has a little speech problem and maybe it is because she has wax build-up too and can't hear very well either." So I started explaining to them how they would lay their heads down and I was going to put a few drops of hydrogen peroxide in their ears. I told them it would feel really cold and sound like fireworks. I didn't mention that it might sting a little. Just thought I would keep that knowledge to myself.

Now sometimes Leighton can be a little scared of things so I thought Zia should go first and show her little brother there is nothing to be scared of. And after all Zia always tells us she is not afraid of anything. Just bees sometimes, especially when we lived beside Bobby! So Zia agreed to be my first patient. She laid her head down on the counter and I put the drops in. She said it felt cold but she didn't hear anything. But soon after it started bubbling and she said it does sound like fireworks. So Leighton thought that that was pretty cool and laid down on the floor to get his. He loved it and couldn't wait for me to do his other ear.

Well in came Brenna and she wanted to know what we were doing. I then explained it to her and she looked at me like I was crazy. (I get that look from her a lot any more. I am sure it is only going to get worse as she gets older.) But Zia and Leighton won her over after she looked in their ears and saw the bubbles and heard them laughing. She consented, so I put a few drops in her ears. She started laughing and had a good time with it to. An interesting note is that she didn't have the noticable bubbles like Zia and Leighton did. She did say it sounded like fireworks, but she doesn't have as much wax as the other two do.

As we were finishing up in the bathroom Trav made it home. Leighton was so excited about it he insisted that Travis try it. So Travis got down on the floor and had me put drops in his ears. He also had noticable bubbling in both ears. (They must get it from their Dad) By this time it was time to head to bed. As I came back into our room Trav was laying on the bed. I ask him if he felt O.K. and he said "No, I can't hear out of my right ear now." So he was giving it another shot. I am not sure if he can hear today. I will try to remember to ask him when he gets home tonight. Hopefully it won't take him as long to get home as it did to get to work this morning :)

2 comments:

Denny said...

Oops!
Maybe he forgot, that when finished he needs to do the "I got peroxide in my ear that won't come out dance" You know-lean over, with the affected ear down, and bounce your upper body up and down until the peroxide comes flying out. That's what I had to do anyway! :)

Kathy said...

You guys are crackin' me up! Gretchen, as I read this I kept thinking, oh no... I hope they do okay...uh oh, is someone gonna end up with an earache, etc. I was nervous throughout! Even though it's always worked for us, I was tense because ya just never know how it will react with others. Thanks for trusting me! And incidentally, Skylar had a cough this morning so guess what we're doing tonight?! :-)