Here’s what happened:
Yesterday I put P1 in her room… her VERY toddler/preschooler-proofed room… for her daily nap. She is generally in there for about 3-4 hours (about ½ hour or a little more to fall asleep and then 2.5-3 hours of sleep). I am quite lucky in that respect J.
Her room has its own bathroom that is kept locked unless Dubya or I need to help her use the potty or give her a bath (which doesn’t happen often. She usually just takes a shower with one of us because her bath tub holds water about as well as a colander). The bathroom is somewhat childproofed, but definitely not safe for her to be in unsupervised. The toilet doesn’t have a lock, the cabinets do not either (though they are mostly empty), etc…
Some time ago, before she really started to pick up on potty training (therefore the bathroom wasn’t used much), a wet pull-up ended up put in the trash can in there. It was probably in there for more than a week before we went in the room again to make sure it was clean enough for some company to take showers in it while they visited (we REALLY never used the room). As I’m sure you can imagine… the smell was less than pleasant (we no longer have a trash can in that room to avoid it happening again… plus we’ve switched to cloth training pants to go with P2’s cloth diapers). After emptying the trash can, scrubbing it out, cleaning the rest of the bathroom and plugging in an air purifier, it still needed something so I plugged in an oil burner as well.
The smell was gone by the time our company arrived but I left the oil burner in there, seeing no reason to remove it. The bathroom was always locked, after all. By the way, the lock is the kind you can unlock with a fingernail or a butter knife or something. I know, I’m frigging brilliant…
While P1 was upstairs yesterday, she somehow got into the bathroom. I went upstairs to find her in the bathroom and the oil burner (which had maybe a tablespoon of oil in it at most) empty. She initially told me she cleaned the oil burner with a flushable wipe but I could smell it on her mouth and when I asked if she ate it she said yes. I guessed she must have tasted it but wiped most of it away with the wipe. I don’t think she would have consumed much. It HAS to taste AWFUL!
Still, as a mom, you can’t help but think of the “what if’s”. What if she had consumed more of it? The bottle of oil, with it’s very un-childproof lid, was in there as well… What if she drank some from it? What if it made her really sick or even *gulp* killed her?
**Okay, seriously… I’m a MOM. I’m allowed to be a little crazy (or bat
“I MUST have left the door unlocked! How could I have been so careless?? It was ALL MY FAULT!! I must be a horrible mother!”
That’s how I felt yesterday…
Today I took her upstairs to get ready for her nap. She had to potty so I took her into the bathroom (now empty of everything but towels, washcloths, toilet paper and children’s shampoo. All of which is up on a shelf she can’t reach… Have you ever tried to clean ½ a bottle of soap off of the floor? It SUCKS!).
As I was unlocking the bathroom door with my thumbnails, my darling almost-three-year-old runs over saying, “Mommy, stop. Don’t use your thumbs! Use this (indicating part of a toy that was just perfect to fit in the lock). ‘Member? Yesterday? I use this and I go in there and touch stuff and eat stuff.”
Suddenly the room got painfully bright and I heard a joyful refrain that could only have been sung by angels:
“Hallelujah! Hallelujah! Halle-e-lu-jah!!!”
IT WASN’T MY FAULT!!!!!
My kid’s just too damn smart… I thought we were supposed to want our kids to be intelligent…
The toy is no longer in her room.
Have any of you ever had that awful mommy moment only to find out it wasn’t your fault at all? Did you feel relieved that you weren’t to blame or terrified of what your kid would figure out next? For me it’s a pretty even mix of both. And why does she have to EAT EVERYTHING???
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