I need a pop up timer

You know those pop up timers that they have on turkeys? You know - the ones that tell you when the turkey is done? O.K. I'll admit that I've only made one, maybe two turkeys but I had one on both turkeys that I made. Well, I need one of those for ear infections. I think it would be very convenient and helpful if kids came equipped with pop up indicators that told us when they had an ear infection.

Sam has been under the weather for a few days. He had a fever yesterday and this morning, so we were giving him Tylenol Plus some runny nose stuff to help with his runny nose (yeah, I know all about the recall, but he's 4.5 and I can read the bottle so as not to overdose him). The stuff dries him up some and drops his fever, plus it seems to make him feel MUCH better, and now we know that it probably masks the ear pain, or so I'm guessing. Tonight, after a day of hanging out, resting, and trying to get himself back into working order, Sam complained that his ear hurt. Well, Max whacked him (accidentally) pretty good earlier in the day, but he said it hurt as he tugged on his ear, and it was enough to keep him from falling to sleep. Poor guy - he might have an ear infection. Here's where the pop up timer comes into play.

For those of us who have kiddos who rarely get things like these, it would be great to know that he has an ear infection or not. Now we have to haul him off to the doctor to see if his runny nose caused his tubes to swell and get all gunked up (yuk!) and whether the fever was from the aforementioned gunk. Hopefully it's not, it's just an ear that got whacked on and hurts, but since we're hopping on a plane on Thursday it's important that we get this cleared up ASAP. Otherwise his head (and mine) might explode on the plane, causing the heads of all those lovely passengers flying with us to explode as well.

So, tomorrow we call the doctor, and hopefully Sam will get some relief from this, whatever it is. But oh how much easier would it be if that timer thing popped up - then we'd know - yep, it's an ear infection!