a hITCH in their plans

i have blessed/cursed my children with my Irish skin.
in ben's case, this means that he is all pale and see-through like me.
for anth, it means that winter is a lotion-required season.
anth's hands have been particularly dry this year, and the other night he had been scratching at them as a result.
i was reading ben a bedtime story in his room at the time.
out of habit, anth went and put a little bit of lotion on his hands.
because he had just been scratching, and he used mommy's lotion instead of his, it ended up stinging his hands.
oops.
now, anth has been fortunate to not experience much pain in his life.
(knocking on wood)
bless his sweet heart, but as a result, he does not handle it all that well.
he came running into ben's room clutching his hands.
(which, come to think of it, they were both doing the clutching and being clutched. huh.)

so... as he was jumping from foot to foot, as this clearly helps with hand pain, i was leaning over the arm of the rocking chair trying to get him to take a few deep breaths.  
i held his hands between mine to give them a little pressure.
(also a scientific pain healer.)
(no?)
(shoot.)

essentially, anth was getting attention.
benny, watching all of this, and being a fan of attention as most of his 2-year-old compatriots are, decided he wanted some as well.
so, ben sized up our dancing-hand-pressure performance and declared "momma, i sick!"
he followed this up by making fake gagging/retching noises.
this involved a lot of making his mouth into a circle and sticking out his tongue in a u-shape while coughing.
after a few rounds of this, he managed to turn himself into a very healthy boy with a concerningly red face.

at this point, anth climbed up to sit on my available leg in the rocking chair, and cupped my ear to whisper, "mom, you know he's faking, right?"
i managed a straight face and asked, "but what if he's not?"
anth did his usual reflective head-tilt-with-furrowed-brow...
"well, then ben should probably be a doctor, because he can tell when people are sick."
anth delivered this with such seriousness that he clearly thought this was a high honor.
ben?
totally offended.
"No, Anny! I be Buzz!"
Anth, still earnest, reached out his red little hand to hold benny's shoulder and say, "ben. you can't be buzz. you can't fly."
ben was heartwrenchingly crushed.
(apparently this had not previously dawned on him.)
anth saw that he had made ben sad, and being the general appeaser that he is, followed up in his best on-the-bright-side voice, "but, maybe you can try to be a bird? or a plane?"

for a kindergartener that usually keeps me on his toes with his vocabulary and intuitive understanding of human dynamics, it's sometimes refreshing to see an occassional slip in the logic.