Wednesday, October 07, 2009

DO NOT LEAVE CHILDREN UNATTENDED

Sunday I was without Brandon all day (after less than 4 hours of sleep on Saturday night). When I took a ten-minute bathroom break that afternoon and left the children unsupervised I came back to a horrendous mess. Jonah had emptied a laundry hamper, turned it over, climbed on it, gotten onto the counter, and gotten into our "junk cupboard." There he found, finger paints, scrapbooking markers, and a bottle of children's ibuprophen. The marker was on the wall in the front room in three lines from the kitchen to his bedroom as if he had walked back and forth drawing all along the wall. It was also in various other spots. In the great effort to open the bottle of "can-nee med-cine" the "child-proof" top must have given way suddenly because all of the contents appeared to be exploded onto the kitchen floor next to some lovely artwork done with fingerpaints.
Seriously, he's quick.
We were expecting dinner guests shortly and thank the heavens that Creative Memories' markers are apparently washable and not permanent as they came right off the wall with a wet rag. (Jonah helped clean up after his time-out.) After mopping the floor a couple times, I went back to tidying up the house and finishing cooking dinner.
Like an idiot, I didn't clean out that cupboard or find a lock for it that evening.
Brandon had the kids all day Monday without incident. Meanwhile I had a blast with my friend Arianna who was here visiting from San Diego.
Yesterday afternoon it warmed up and I decided to take the kids for a walk just before 4:00. I went into my room to pee, put on shoes, chapstick, and pull my hair back. When I came out, Jonah had pulled the same stunt. He was holding a fat, black permanent marker. It had drawn on a few photographs and papers on the fridge and a little bit on one cupboard. Thank goodness the damage wasn't worse! Then I noticed a puddle on the floor and liquid on Elora's pants. At first I thought it was water, no such luck. Even though I'd taken all medications out of the kitchen for awhile, some had made it back. There was a puddle of clear Children's Benadryl was on the floor. It wasn't as big as the ibuprophen puddle. The bottle had been put back in the cupboard, sans lid, sneaky little bugger.
For some unknown, stupid reason I assumed he hadn't drunk much and we went on our walk. He was fine until about 6pm when he started acting crazy tired/whiney. He didn't eat much dinner (but he hadn't eaten much lunch either). After a bath I put him at 7:15, only about 15 minutes earlier than his normal bed-time. I then ran to a friend's baby shower and when I returned an hour later, Brandon said Jonah was still playing around in his room and wouldn't go to sleep. It wasn't until an hour later that we realized that he must have downed quite a bit of that medicine.
We called a doctor, who thought it very odd that his reaction had been so delayed but because he wasn't exhibiting any other symptoms (other than jittery-ness, and sleeplessness) all we could do was keep an eye on him. He fell asleep shortly before 2am. Yes, I said 2:00 am. He woke up bright-eyed and bushy-tailed at 7:00.
It's going to be a long day.

P.S.- In the midst of writing this post, I took a break to read to and play with my kids. Elora's forehead bashed me in the cheek so hard I bawled. I can't even remember the last time I cried because of physical pain.
It's going to be a really long day.

2 comments:

Robin said...

HOly crap! Not fun, I'm sorry. I hope you all pass out after lunch for a nice nap. Love you.

Lacey said...

I want to cry just thinking about it. hope the kids get to bed without too much mayhem.