Beware of This Plant

Seriously. This plant wreaked HAVOC on an otherwise lovely Friday night. Take a good look at it. This is the "dangerous" part of it...

And this is what it looks like in it's full weed-wonderful-ness. I have no idea what it's called (mental note: perhaps I should have found that information prior to doing a blog post about it...nah! Move on...) but I live in North America and it always seems to find it's way into my yard...so WATCH OUT!
So last night one of the gay boyfriends was over with his new puppies and we were all happily playing in the backyard. Out of nowhere The Boy goes running up to me screaming saying his hand hurt, "HIS HANDS HURT!!!" so we go into the bathroom to wash them off. As I am trying to do this he is freaking the fuck out. I am serious. I was like, "What is happening?" and he would tell me it felt like there were 1,000 splinters in his hands and his hands were on fire." I tried to wash them off but the thought of rubbing them together sent him into full on hyperventilation so we scratched that idea. We did rinse them with cold water, then we sprayed some Benadryl spray stuff on them and put a few bandaids on them. Then we took a little Ibuprofen. I have to say that I was completely confused. The kid had gone POSTAL but his hands looked fine. I could see NOTHING on them. I thought he had lost his mind. Seriously...I was like, "OMG my kids can't handle the smallest amount of pain...he totally lost his mind and there is nothing on his hands..."

So while he was still complaining about his hands over an hour later, he was able to go to sleep and slept fine through the night. This morning I could see red inflammation from the two places he said had hurt him the worst, but I still couldn't see anything of substance. He said they felt better but still hurt a little.

Last night he had told me he thought it might have been the plant with "the grapes" that he was playing with. While we were sitting outside, he had pulled the top part of that weed off and was taking each "grape" off and throwing it. So he had the inside of that plant all over his hands. I told him I would check it out today. Then I also thought that perhaps he had been stung by something...or even that the swings had given him a little plastic-splinter in his hands or something. So once he got home from his birthday party today we went outside to check it out. The Ex grabbed the "grape plant" (pictured above) and pulled apart the little "grapes" just like he had done and rubbed it all over her hands and she was like, "no...this is fine. Very smooth. Nothing pokey in it...it does smell a little funky...maybe he is allergic to it?" and we went over to check out the swings. Those were fine too, so we were all stumped. About 10 minutes later we were going inside and The Ex was like, "OMG my hands ARE hurting. I have to wash them!" She ran to the sink and washed them and as time went on she said it felt like there was 100 needles in her hands. It was horrible. She texted me over a half an hour later saying she felt SO bad for our boy...her hands felt like they were on fire, she was fighting tears they hurt so bad...and all of a sudden The Boy's reaction last night made perfect sense.

But the poor kid. Those things are awful! If you see them in your yard...keep your kids away from it!