You ate what?

I now have the number for poison control saved in my phone. After my second call in the last six months I thought it was a good "investment."

While the topic is still fresh, I figured a blog about the history of Reese's food "experiments" was timely.

1. In June, the day before we went to the beach Reese I made my first ever call to poison control. While I was taking a shower, Reese brought her step stool into our bathroom, pulled it up to our counter, and got a hold of a tube of toothpaste. She managed to remove the twist off cap, and when I exited the shower, she was spooning finger-fulls of toothpaste into her mouth. Luckily the tube was almost empty, so she couldn't have consumed very much. I was shocked on several levels, mainly: When did she learn to unscrew things? How resourceful that she figured out that she needed her step-stool to get things off the counter. And so began my experience with poison control. Luckily, based on her weight and the amount she ate, we were able to easily solve the problem by giving her a glass of milk and some tums. (To bind with the fluoride and neutralize it.)

2. Several weeks after our trip to the beach, Reese became interested in floss. Knowing that she'd have to start flossing some day, we indulged her interest, and helped her floss her teeth each night. After Mommy and Daddy did the majority of the flossing, she got a turn to try herself. One night, Daddy was flossing his teeth after dinner and when Reese asked for a piece of floss he gave it to her. Wrapped up in doing the dishes, neither of us noticed that she swallowed it. When we asked her what happened she very quickly and honestly told us she ate the floss. I called the pediatrician the next morning to ask their advice. "It should be no problem," they began, "she'll likely pass it in her stool in the next day or so. But, if you don't see it come out in the next two days, or she starts having trouble having bowel movements bring her in." What was their concern? That the piece of floss could get bunched up or wrapped around her intestines requiring surgery. Great. She got a dose of Miralax that morning to ensure there would be no holding back. Mommy had a day of poop foraging, and by the evening had discovered a six inch piece of floss embedded in a dirty diaper.

Which brings us to last week, and my second call to poison control
3. Bath and Body Works now makes their "anti-bac" line in every format imaginable. Soap, lotion, hand gel, and now a hand spray. Shortly after Paige was born, I bought a small container of hand-spray-sanitizer to keep on the changing table.
While changing Paige's diaper, Reese got a hold of it and took it to the living room. By the time I got to the living room with a freshly diapered baby in tow, Reese had unscrewed the cap and was working on disassembling the sprayer. I immediately asked, "Did you drink any of the spray?" "No, it tastes yucky." Hmmm...the logic here had me concerned. "How do you know it tastes yucky?" "Because it's yucky in my mouth." we continued. "Then you did drink some spray?" "No." This exchange continued until I finally understood it was an issue of semantics. Yes, Reese did drink the sanitizer solution, just not from the sprayer. And why not try something that smells like coconuts? With 70%+ alcohol content, and God only knows how much in her system, it was time to call my friends at poison control. The woman who answered my call scrolled through her data base, "Let's see, was it gel, lotion, or soap?" "None of those, actually, it was spray." I had the "honor" of explaining the new product line, reading the alcohol content off the back and helping her update the poison control data base--apparently we were their first call about ingesting the "spray" variety. Again, the concerns were minimal--their main advice was to watch for signs of intoxication and to give her a sugary snack (lest her blood sugar dip while she metabolizes the alcohol). There was no running into walls, or even staggering around that afternoon, so i can only assume she's inherited some good tolerance. ;o)