Summer is in full swing here, obviously, if you’ve not been paying attention to the oodles of posts about the Monster and summer camp.

That and the fact that it’s been hot as hell all week (at least in terms of how such gets in Maryland) with multiple days in a row of 90F temperatures and seventy-something percent humidity.

Part of going to summer camp – or, frankly, anything about being outside in the summer, is applying sunblock each day.  The camp asks that all parents put sunblock on their kids before they get on the bus, so that the counselors don’t have to worry about it when they arrive, and with the proviso that the counselors will reapply it as appropriate at intervals during the day.

Getting sunblock on the Monster has always been something of a chore – I don’t know a single child who really relishes having it put on, and I’ll admit that I don’t even particularly like it – but with having to apply it every morning, he’s started to dread the dressing ritual, knowing that at its climax, he’s going to be sprayed down with sunblock.  He fights, he squirms, he screams, and he generally thrashes to try to avoid having to have it applied.

My issues, primarily, are the fact that I don’t like how it smells or how it feels on my skin.  I tend away from spray-on sunblock myself for the former issue – my preference is Hawaiian Tropic oil, with a lower SPF, but a) I also reapply as appropriate on my own, and b) I’m also less fair-skinned than the wife and children.  And I’m a perfectly “normal” person in a sensory sense.  I have to wonder, therefore, if the issues that the Monster has are sensory as well, and if there’s not another way to do it.  (Of course, we’ve also not asked J if he puts up such a fight at camp when he’s having it reapplied.  And that might be that they have a way to get him to do it… or he’s just not as fighty about it after swim.)

Might have to try sunblock lotion instead over the weekend to see if we have less of a fight…