Never a dull moment

In the last month or so (it was New Year's Day to be perfectly accurate) I decided to "toddler-proof" our home. We never baby-proofed, aside from Joel's dad putting some latches on our kitchen cabinets, but curious little Jericho proved all too mischievous as he rounded his 2nd birthday and we had to then take that step. I went to 3 stores and spent about $50 before I was done that day.

Let me first back up to let everyone know what spurred this little Jericho-proofing tirade of mine - On New Year's Eve, mommy's little Moose got ahold of a bottle of Benadryl and drank... less than half but more than a quarter of a bottle. Child proof my a**. I didn't even notice he'd done it until he handed me the bottle and asked for more. I know what you're thinking - "Sweet, knocked out kid on New Year's Eve." Little FYI - when you drink TOO MUCH Benadryl, it has the opposite effect. I didn't know that either until I was informed by the lady on the other end of the Poison Control line.

So the next day I childproofed our home - outlet covers that swivel closed automatically when something is unplugged, plus the little cheap ones that you plug into the empty outlets, plus these big bulky ones that keep things from getting unplugged, a latch for the fridge (whole 'nother story - it involves a pitcher of grape juice and my off-white couch), and door knob covers. I was pretty proud of my little excursion when I was done. Joel was not, but it was that much less that he had to hear me bitch about Jericho getting into everything... everybody wins.

The key to the doorknob covers, though, is that someone has to CLOSE THE DOOR in order for them to be effective. This is a discussion I've had with my daughter and husband multiple times. Case in point - this morning, someone left the upstairs bathroom door open (and gawd forbid I'd be doing something selfish like peeing in the other bathroom) and Jericho got into daddy's pills and wanted to see how they tasted. Blood pressure medicine is fairly blah, FYI. As soon as I flushed some fluids through him and finally finished freaking out about that incident, oh wouldn't you know we'd have another? Because that's my life.

I had just gotten Jericho sat down to watch his 3rd episode of Blue's Clues (what can I say - he's addicted) when I dropped my coffee cup in the kitchen. Not only was there coffee on everything in a 3 foot radius of my kitchen table, but the handle on the mug (RIP FedEx coffee cup) broke into about 6 pieces. I hurried to clean it up before Jericho could get his hands on anything and thought I did a pretty good job.

... Until he came back into the kitchen a few minutes later while I was mopping and told me "mom, it hurt" and sure enough his chubby little hands were both just covered in blood. I finally pried his fists open and he was clenching onto a piece of the broken handle. (Seriously?) I sat him on the counter and wiped both of his hands off repeatedly until I finally figured out that all of the blood was just coming from one cut on one hand. I called Joel in a panic and told him I thought he might need it stitched up or glued up or whatever the heck they do to little tiny mutilated fingers, but finally decided to wait until I calmed down. Good thing I did, because I'm sure we just saved $200 at the ER. He went through about 4 Band-Aids but the bleeding has finally stopped, or at least slowed down. The prognosis is good.

Good thing he had just taken his blood pressure medicine.

Yeah, I might be the worst mommy ever. (For the record, I am typing this during nap time, so he's not off somewhere playing with knives or power tools.)