Ava, unbeknownst to us, grabbed some sort of cactus near the end of our little walk this evening. We didn't realize it until she met us at the front door, holding her arms behind her back, looking up at us with fear in her eyes. I asked her what was wrong and she started sobbing, frantically refusing us a look at her hands. Finally, she showed us that her poor tiny hands were covered in minuscule cactus spines. I pulled her into the bathroom, sat her on the counter, shoved her paci in her mouth, and grabbed the tweezers. I pulled out as many as I could see, but she was so frantic I couldn't hold her hands still. After a few chocolate chips to calm her down, it was then that I realized her hands were absolutely covered. Covered. in these bastard cactus needles. There was no way I was removing all of them with a crappy pair of tweezers.

I asked Mike to Google (jesus I love me some Google) what to do and he came back with Elmer's Glue. So, I filled a bowl with the glue, dipped and coated her hands and let them dry. We watched an episode of Sesame Street before pulling the glue away. For the most part it worked, I only needed to remove maybe a dozen needles afterwards. I'm not sure what was more traumatic for her: tweezing or pulling the glue off. "Ow, ow, ooowww!!!"

After enduring the two hour trauma and getting Ava into bed, I felt like I had been hit by a bus.  I headed to the gym for a nice hour long workout and indulged in my guilty reality pleasure, the Kardashians (dammit Netflix why can't you just stream all the seasons already). Then I came home, showered, ate a massive bowl of watermelon, and I'm now deciding whether to stay up and work or call it a day. I think I'll call it day. (Oh, what a day it has been.)

Also, I think everyone should know:

This was Ava's response to me asking her to clean her room today: Without skipping a beat she looks at me and says, "it's too hard. I'm sick."