My son is trying to kill me.

He’s taking the pink stuff. The stuff that tastes like bubble gum and sits in every parents’ refrigerator. He hates it, and when I squirt it into his stubbornly closed mouth, it goes everywhere. I get it all over my fingers, and like I do when I get chocolate sauce or cookie dough on my fingers, I want to lick them. Except that I am allergic to Amoxicillin. As in anaphylactic shock allergic. It’s Oscar’s two-part devious plan. If it’s not the pink stuff, it will be the sleep deprivation.

That’s right, Oscar has his first ear infection.

I noticed his was sick on Friday night when I went to change his diaper and he felt like a hot coal. I took his temperature and it was 102, so I did what any normal, competent parent would do, I panicked and called my sister. After telling me not to call 911 she told me a about a magic substance called Baby Motrin.

I love Baby Motrin and want to marry it. Don’t tell Darin.

The Motrin helped for awhile, but then it didn’t, and I decided to take Oscar into Dante’s Seventh Layer of Hell: Urgent Care on a Sunday afternoon.

We waited for two hours while I glowered at all of the people with snowboarding injuries and thought, why are you getting seen before my son, who is clearly dying? I was like Shirley MacLaine in Terms of Endearment.

After waiting for two hours we finally got called back to the exam room, where we waited for another hour. This was worse than sitting on a plane with Oscar for three hours, because there were no peanuts. We finally got out of there, prescription in hand, and headed to the pharmacy. There they asked me if Oscar was allergic to any medicine.

“I don’t know,” I said, “He’s never had any medicine.” Then I added, “I guess that’s how you find out, huh?”

The pharmacist nodded cheerfully and told me to keep an eye out for a rash or trouble breathing. I took him home, gave him the medicine, and hovered over him for awhile making sure he didn’t die.

Now he’s back to his old self, which means doing his Russel Crowe imitation. He throws his food, trashes his crib, and gets into bar fights.

I’m trying to send him to military school, but they only take kids who have been potty trained.