Monday, May 15, 2006

From Soap to Nuts

I was enjoying a nice, hot shower this morning, while Tommy played with the shower curtain and tried to climb in the tub. This is our usual morning routine, so I wasn't too concerned, until I heard him coughing like he had something stuck in his throat. "Ack, ack" he hacked, "Ack ack ack."

I stuck my head out of the shower to find my son foaming at the mouth, mad-dog style. His breath held the clean promise of an Irish Spring.

"You didn't eat the soap!" I cried, as I did a quick finger-sweep to make sure there were no lingering pieces. He just grinned through the bubbles.

Having recently read Heth's expose on cooking with dish soap, I wasn't too worried about Tom's health. Until I put in my contacts and examined the bar of soap he'd been munching on.

A large hunk had been gnawed off the end, maybe an inch long by half-an-inch thick. There were clear bite marks on the soap where his little teeth had done their work.

And so I made my first call to poison control, where a lovely lady with (ironically) an Irish accent told me that soap is not poisonous, but might irritate his digestive tract. A little diaper cream would be all the first aid required.

Phew. Now if I could just get him to bathe with the stuff instead of eating it ...

Now, the finale. Tom just found a chocolate-covered nut on the floor and devoured it. (Horrors, nuts and chocolate eaten by a nine-month-old!) I think I win the bad mommy award today.

5 Comments:

Mall Worker said...

Yuck! Poor Tommy!

Rachelle said...

LOL! YOu're not a bad mom at all. I am laughing at the foaming at the mouth. The things kids will get into!

Chilihead2 said...

You are so NOT a bad mom. ;) Just make sure he's not picking up anything off the floor at Wal-Mart. Ewwww.

Anonymous said...

Well, Sydney and Tom would be good soap-eating pals. She LOVES to eat soap. I can't prevent her from doing it. I put soap on her in the tub, and she immediately scoops it off and puts in her mouth. And here she is almost 2...hopefully they'll both figure out that it doesn't taste good (probably with much convincing on our part).

Jen Rouse said...

My daughter loves soap too. I don't understand it. We have to keep the bar soap up where she can't reach it, or we find it with little bite marks in it. She is 22 months old and I've called poison control twice...once when she ate potting soil and then started throwing up, once when I found her hiding in the closet sucking on a tube of toothpaste. Both times they told me it was no big deal.