When's the Last Time You Called Poison Control?

Based on the title of this post alone, you know it's going to be a good one, right?

Let me share a little bit about our day, which can mostly be captured with my Facebook posts. Here's the first one, shortly after my first failed attempt to put Teddy down for a nap:

Snowman fun after baking the pizza AJ made at school. Teddy is not in the picture because he insisted on heading to the neighbor's house repeatedly. It's not his fault. They invited him over. I mean, their garage door was open, so that's like an open invite to Teddy. 
 

AJ was waving the snowman's arm.

I swear that an open garage door, or better worse yet, an open door on a vehicle emits this strange frequency that only Teddy can here, summoning his presence. Once our neighbors left their vehicle hatch open for an extended period, presumably drying out something inside the vehicle. Let's just say we had to go inside because we couldn't keep Teddy in our yard. Today I chased him down at least three times as he headed to the neighbor's house. Had I let him be, I'm sure he would have been happily inside playing with their little girls' toys or trying to climb into their fishing boat.

Would it be rude of me to bake all our neighbors cookies and deliver them with a request to keep their garage doors and vehicle doors shut?

Fast forward about an hour later when Teddy should be tired from playing outside. Nap time, round two. He seems to be settling down after some of his usual thumps, so I decide to get a head start baking birthday treats for Dave (and eat lunch since it's 1:30 p.m.) Maybe he fell asleep, but wait, did I just hear him? Hmm, that's a lot of thumping, but he's not upset, so we'll finish up our baking (and LEGO time for AJ). Oops, he's crying. Better go rescue him.

30 minutes later came my next Facebook post:

Good news-Teddy used his fine motor skills to open a bottle with a twisting motion. 

Bad news-he did it when he was supposed to be napping.

Worse news-it was a bottle of Tylenol from the diaper bag hanging in his closet.

Best news-Poison Control says he'll be just fine, even if the bottle was full before he got it open. (And there's a chance he ate none. He won't tell me.)

Then he was playing in the toilet twice while I was on the phone with Poison Control. Sometimes I wish he wasn't developing all these skills ... eh, I just realize he use them more appropriately.

This is the second time I've had to call Poison Control. Fortunately both were relatively minor incidents with no significant risk of harm, so instead of panicking I simply felt guilty about being a bad parent as I made the call. For some reason, I'd much rather call his pediatrician's office than Poison Control, even though I know the nurse is going to tell me to call Poison Control.

Based on comments to my Facebook post, quite a few other parents make use of this valuable resource. (Seriously, I appreciate their knowledge, calm demeanor and let's not forget their non-judgemental responses.) And I had one other person who has children with the same type of diagnosis as Teddy share a picture of her son after he drank from the toilet, imitating their family dog.

Sure, I could have posted pictures of the cupcakes I baked and just our snowman, but that doesn't tell the rest of the story that happened during the making of those events. Sometimes, folks, we just need to keep it real.