A Mother's Sacrifice

This afternoon I noticed that Euan had disturbed one of the mosquito's resting places under our couch/bench and that the mosquito was swarming him. I'm always on the prowl for a good mosquito killing because last time we lived in Taiwan mosquitoes were the main source of midnight wakings (why DO they buzz your ears right before they go in for the kill?). We are luckier here on the 8th floor but occasionally a mosquito rides the elevator up and finds it's way into our house. And I knew that we had a couple lurking in our shadows because I found 3 or 4 bites on Euan this morning when I got him up. I was not a happy mama. So I poised myself to get that blood-sucker. Now, I should mention that the mosquitoes here are a faster, smarter species than any I knew in America (Scott calls them "bionic"). They aren't very easy to find and kill; they don't linger on their prey for very long. So I hovered over Euan and he laughed with joy as he watched mommy play what he thought was a clapping game, but what was really a mother hen pecking at the danger. I was so excited when I looked down after a minute and noticed a squished mosquito on one of my fingers. I went back to playing and noticed a second mosquito begin to swarm Euan. Again the clapping game. And I finally squished him next to our hard tile floors! Yeah! But wait, there was a little blood when I squished him so I got perturbed again and checked poor Euan for where he was bit. Nothing. Hmmm, must have been from someone else...Back to playing with my sweet baby. Wait, why am I itching? In protecting my baby, I didn't even notice that those darn mosquitoes had bitten me FOUR times! Ahhh, a mother's sacrifice.