Child Proof My Aunt Fanny!

Monday evening, Thing2 woke up at about 11 pm coughing, crying, and acting otherwise pretty puny.  We spent about an hour trying to comfort him back to sleep before I gave up and took him to the couch,  propped him up with some pillows, and turned on Thomas the Train.  I figured that if he had a stuffed up nose (which he violently resisted me suctioning) and an earache, that the best thing to do was let him try to fall asleep sitting up.  Which he finally did around 2:30 am.

When he finally woke up around 9 am the next morning, he was still stuffy, coughing lightly, and telling me his ear hurt.  So, I put some drops in his ear and gave him 1 tsp of Children's Ibuprofen.  Then my baby looks up at me with his big sad hazel eyes and says "Mommy, I want Polar Express DBD."  Now, I am one of those people who abhors Christmas movies outside of Thanksgiving to New Years, so for the last two months every time they have asked for this movie I've let them know that it will come back at Thanksgiving.  But on this day, I looked at my pitiful little buddy and said "okay," then went down in the basement and spent 15 minutes digging through Christmas totes until I had procured the slim 8X6 box.

I poured us some orange juice, popped some popcorn, then popped the movie in the player.  And even though it was March 1, I enjoyed watching that Christmas movie for the sheer fact that it made Thing2 smile.

After the movie ended, I got up for a potty break.  I could hear Thing2 moving around in the kitchen and thought "good, he's feeling better."  Coming out of the bathroom, I see my smiling boy walking down the hallway towards me, holding an empty bottle of Children's Ibuprofen, and proudly proclaiming "Look Mommy, it's all gone."

Now, I will admit, I remained fairly calm, as I knew the bottle was mostly empty.  I grabbed one of our phones, which all have the number for poison control right on them, thanks to a handy package of stickers and magnets they sent us a year or so ago. (For free!)

Immediately Joanne asked how much he had ingested.  I knew it couldn't have been much, but since those bottles are deceiving, I decided to fill it up with water to approximately how much I thought was left and then measure that out.  To my surprise, it was as much as 6 tsps!  Holy moly!  A dose for a 90 lb child is only 3 tsps (Thing2 weighs 31).  I felt my heart quicken.  I was waiting for her to say "take him straight to the hospital."

But she didn't.  To my great relief, she said "he's going to be fine."  She said that he might get a little groggy, and would probably take a big nap in about an hour.  That I should tickle his feet every 15 minutes or so while he is sleeping it off to watch for reaction.  She'd call me back in about two hours to check on him.

I was relieved, but still angry at myself.  How had I let this happen.  I had left the bottle on the kitchen window sill.  But I know those boys can climb to anything they want.  But the lid was child proof, right?  I called my little imp over and handed him the empty bottle with the lid fastened tightly, and said "open this."  In less than 20 seconds, he had it opened and upturned in his mouth, spiking it down to the ground when he found it void of the sweet sticky substance he was hoping for. Child Proof My Aunt Fanny!!

Luckily, Thing2 really did have no side effects.  He never even got groggy.  By the time Joanne called back at 1 pm to check on him, I was silently praying for a nap.  Because I was exhausted.

The moral(s) of the story:  Don't trust child proof locks. Always keep the number for Poison Control where you can find it quickly.  It's okay to watch Christmas movies in March, if it makes your kid feel better when he is sick.  And if you want to cure your kid's ear infection, give him 6x his dosage of pain killer!