Some of you are familiar with the stink bug invasion of aught-nine. Well, they keep crawling out of the woodwork. About once a week, I still flush a stink bug, ever so carefully, down the toilet. A couple of weeks ago, the Little Guy was screaming, “Mommy, HELP!” from his bedroom. I thought, “Here we go. Another excuse for me to come into his room!” I ran up the stairs in case he really was in trouble and here is how it went:
Little Guy: “Mommy, HELP!”
Mommy: “What’s wrong?’
Little Guy: “Mommy, stink bug!”
Mommy: “Stink bug? Where?” (I was sure he was making this up!)
Little Guy: Points to his pillow from a safe distance across the room.
Mommy: Walks over to the bed to investigate.
I did not see a stink bug, but peices from his blanket that looked like they could be an imaginary stink bug. And then I spied it! On the corner of the pillow…A BIG FAT STINK BUG! I freaked out in my mind and grabbed the pillow and put it on the floor, went to to bathroom (shaking the heebie-jeebies out) and grabbed some tissue, came back into the room as calmly as I could and grabbed the bug.
Mommy: “Say goodnight stink bug!”
Little Guy: “Goodnight stink bug!”
I took the stink bug into the bathroom, stuck him in the toilet and flushed…lid down! Then, I walked back into the Little Guy’s room.
Little Guy: “Mommy sing a song.”
Mommy: “OK, what song?”
Little Guy: “The stink bug song.”
Stumped, this is what I came up with…
Mommy: “The itsy bitsy sting bug…”
You know the rest. YUCK!!!
stephany taddeo 
Excellent recovery, we’ve had similar run-ins with spiders. Sash got very good at spotting them this past summer and every fuzzy from a rug, cat fur clump, Birch Tree seed pod, you name it was a “pider”. So we got used to hearing “yooook mommy, pider! pider!”. Always nice to have a kid close to the ground for bug identification.
Wow! I thought they’d all be dead by now! If Portland would get a good month long New York freeze, maybe the little buggers would head out to sting bug heaven. OR. Perhaps you could make a deal with them: promise to feed them IF they stay outside. OR. Turn this into a golden opportunity. Write a movie script titled, “The Stink Bugs that Ate Portland.” The hero could be a protective mother who goes Clint Eastwood on the stinky hordes, using a magnum gas extinguisher—“Make my day, punks!!!”
OK… I have no idea what a stink bug is, but they sound gross! I love that he requested a song about them and that you obliged. I can just imagine your outward calm… I can’t even pretend!!
great song on-the-spot… wonder if they will go away if you sing S-T-I-N-K to the B-I-N-G-O song when you get sick of “itsybitsy stink bug” ILY K
What the heck is a stink bug???
Stink bugs look like a box elder bug, but, similar to skunks, if irritated will let forth a sulfur, rotten egg smell! Yummmmm, delicious.
When I was watching the kids this weekend, I hear Reece yelling, “Poppa bug! Poppa bug!” I figure to myself that he wants an excuse for me to come into the room, and dammit Steph’s just too soft on him. I mean, it’s a cruel, cruel world and the kid might as well learn that as soon as he can. He’ll be fine. AFter about 15 minutes of this, I hear quiet.
See, I knew there wasn’t anything to worry about, and patted myself on the back for making the kid a little tougher. An hour into his nap, he wakes up and again screams, “Poppa bug! Poppa bug!” Oh well, just another short nap. I go to get him from his room, and he’s standing as far away from his bed as possible, his eyes are a bit swollen with tears running down his cheeks and he’s pointing to his bed, “Poppa, bug!”
Yep, a stink bug, crawling around on his pillow! I felt so bad, and scooped him up and asked if it was scary. He said, “Yam (Reeceism for yes),” I said, “You were very brave.” He said, “Yam berry berry brave.”
What else? I brought him downstairs for a special snack.
I also made a mental note, that he now gets another “Get out of jail for free cards” from his ol’ man in his bank account. At this rate, by the time the kid’s in grammar school, I’m going to be in debt to him up to my ass.
We’ve all had to give our kids those get out of jail free cards!! I think my most notorious “tough love” story was when Patrick was sick a few years ago and I figured we would ride it out because you can’t take them in for every little thing right? This went on over two weeks where he would feel sick, then get better, etc. I finally took him in and he had PNEUMONIA!!! So when the doc asked me how long he had been sick and I said over 2 weeks I felt like just about the shittiest Mom on the planet. It is a miracle that children survive their time with us 🙂
oh man, we had stink bugs in Michigan! Ewwwww. Good job exterminating mom….and nice work with the on-the-spot song. I’m impressed! xo, Kate
It always seemed to me when you all were small that those times when I thought I should get tough about the “cry wolf” habit were precisely the very worst times to doso… Maybe there aren’t ever good times to do that… or maybe I just made really bad choices. Parents of all ages beat themselves up a lot. We can only do the best we can do each moment, each day.
Thank God that I am a perfect mother and never ignore my child’s pleas for help (which, btw, i learned from my own mother who never ignored me because I was, and still am, her favorite). I couldn’t live with the guilt of nap time with a stinkbug or the suffering with pneumonia. Gosh, I’m awesome:)
i used to tell my kids that the toilet is how you get bugs back to their mommies (a la Finding Nemo). so we would flush the bugs down the toilet and say “bye bye buggy! go home to your mama!”