Ahhhh The First Sign Of Spring! Poison Ivy!

As many of you know (and most of you don’t care) the town house I currently reside in is situated right next to a creek and it’s absolutely beautiful when things start to bloom. As the years have pass that I have lived here I’ve realized that the beauty is but a veneer to it’s true nature, the beautiful leaves and flowers hide the hideously large amounts of poison ivy twining up the trees and creeping along the ground (in a few weeks I’ll take a photo of the absolutely stunning patch of poison ivy that completely chokes out everything and carpets the floor in this one are of the ‘woods’). My progeny are forbidden from going into the wooded area for many reasons but for this really BIG one as Super Girl is SUPER sensitive to poison ivy (last spring she missed 3 days of school for a particularly nasty poison ivy rash that caused her to do a spot on impression of The Elephant Man).

This spring the allure of the woods calls all the children to creep through them down to the creek to get filthy. I am a mother, I am devoid of all fun (according to those I gave birth to) and my sole purpose is to crush all fun to be had by anyone under the age of 10 (again this is according to the two I have birthed). For the past couple of months my offspring have been playing Russian Roulette with the wooded area, they continue to venture into it with their friends and I continue to catch them and ground them – but my wrath isn’t what they are playing with, it’s the poison ivy. Up until now it hadn’t taken it’s usual strangle hold on the wooded area and wasn’t covering nearly every inch of ground so they’ve managed to come out of the woods with only the wrath of their angry and humorless mother. Earlier this week I noticed three relatively small rashes on Super Girl. AND much to my surprise, Cabbage Patch has a rash on her wrist! This was the child I thought WASN’T reactive! So… it’s spring and it’s itchy. Time to stock up on Calamine lotion and Aveno Bath’s.