Now that I live in a world where putting a child-proof item on a high shelf means nothing, I am trying very hard to secure our arsenal of over-the-counter medications and other dangerous items. My lord, there are a lot of things in this house and in this world, which, if ingested in huge quantities, can do a lot of harm to a tiny body. A whole tube of Fluoride toothpaste? Sure, that would be toxic. What about a whole bottle of cough medicine? And so on. I doesn't help that we've been dealing with a wide array of illnesses over the last six weeks and so have had occasion to gather supplies.
As if to punctuate the point, in the last two days Elias has a) sat himself down to watch TV, while eating a cereal bowl full of sugar with his bare hands (he got up to a high cabinet using a stool, got the sugar bowl out of the cupboard, somehow got the sugar bowl– a nice porcelain one with a lid– down to the floor without breaking or spilling it, got himself a bowl and poured it in… all in two seconds…); b) come running in with the children's vitamins (WITH IRON– ultra dangerous), "To get help" with the child-proof cap! (again, the high cupboard and the stool routine, but in this case the child-proof cap actually thwarted him… thank GOD. If he had eaten a bunch of those we'd be in serious trouble right now); and c) gotten hold of Isaac's puffer and puffed it until it was completely empty… the damn things are expensive!
"Was Isaac this bad?" mused Ben over dinner last night. I don't think so… Isaac was more of faller– down the stairs, off counters, etc.– than a poisoning risk. Elias is posing a whole new level of challenge.
So. We have to find a way a place somewhere in the house that will actually be Elias Proof. I got a Safety First child-proof cabinet lock and initially installed it on the medicine cabinet in the upstairs bath. However, shortly I realized that these things are only as good as the humans who use them. Within the first 12 hours I found the lock sitting there beside it– someone (probably me) had forgotten to lock it. So I decided it needed to be a more obscure cabinet than the one we use hundreds of times a day. I settled on the very highest kitchen cabinet. Then I began walking the house from end to end, room to room, trying to corral all the things that could possibly be construed as tasty yet harmful. The cabinet is packed to the brim with the loot. I locked it. Then I brought in Elias. I set him on the tallest stool we have and asked him to open the cupboard. Standing on his tippy toes he could reach it, but he couldn't get it undone. He struggled and struggled for a few moments and then began to cry. "Don't sink I can!" he lamented. "Need help!"
"Thank you very much," I said, lifting him on to the floor.
I hope that that will hold him for a while, but Isaac is skeptical. "He'll learn how to do it just by watching," he predicts. And he may be right. Damn… this little bright-eyed cherub is alert to every detail! And as a teacher put it, "He has those great Montessori fine motor skills!" But in the case of this cabinet he also has to grow a couple inches, which will take time. And during that time one can only hope that some SENSE will grow in also.
On facebook, I posted a photo of the children in the big cat cage I was using recently for Bagheera– that's one way to child-proof the house, simply incarcerate the children. (Don't judge me… I just like to keep my children in a cage. Is that so wrong?) My mother mentioned storing the medication in a gun locker. Other suggestions range from leg irons to duct tape.
As Secretary Clinton likes to say with regard to Iran, I haven't ruled anything in or out.