Addie's Death Wish Day

I emerged from the shower today to find Addie and Chloe sitting in a pile of medication pulled from a high shelf in the linen closet. Addie was happily crunching on a children's Pepto tablet. I immediately pulled the "candy" away and asked Chloe what happened. She said Addie did it, and seemed to be telling the truth. Basically, Addie opened the linen closet, scaled a couple shelves, emptied the turntables of medication, opened a child proof bottle, and consumed half of it, by my calculations. Good news is, after talking to the advice nurse and poison control, children's Pepto is essentially Tums, and she'll be just fine.

During lunch, Addie decided to piece by piece, flick her ketchup covered leftovers to the floor. Then she mashed her grapes flat with her plate. These are not dangerous activities in and of themselves, but are pretty risky behavior in front of a mom fresh off the phone with poison control who has a destroyed linen closet. I took her in her room to get her dressed and noticed that her diaper was dangerously askew. I spent the next few minutes chasing her around, trying to pin her down so I could change her. Before I could get her, I heard the squirt of juicy poop and cringed. As the poop soaked through her pants, I hustled her into the bathroom. I got the diaper off and was attempting to clean up the mess when she rumbled again and coated the stool, my bathroom vanity, the wall and the floor with more excrement. At this point, I just threw her in the shower. As I choked back tears of frustration, I cleaned up the mess. Addie kept calling out, "Poop! Shower!" Fortunately it was the kind of poop that just ran down the drain, so I let it. What else could I do? I at least felt grateful that I'd had the foresight to get her to the bathroom before I attempted the project.

I was relieved when that hour of my life was over. Things improved after that, but Addie still seemed to have it in for herself. We went to the tile store to order the tile for the shower surround, and after we left, Addie was upset about her hands being dirty. I didn't look too closely until we got to our next location, when I saw that they seemed to be covered with something sticky. It all came together when I remembered that one of the employees at the tile store had been gluing some new displays together, and I had seen Addie playing with some tiles right before we left the store. Sorry, Style's 'N' Tile, for wrecking your new display. At least she did it quietly.

Speaking of quietly, yesterday Addie mastered the art of quietly moving the stool through the kitchen. Usually she grabs it and pushes it for all she's worth, making a noise like a freight train, and inevitably getting caught before she completes what ever mission of mischief she's on. It was pretty obvious that she'd figured that whole pattern out because though I could still hear the stool moving, she was really trying hard not to get caught. I went into the kitchen to find her rhythmically pressing the water dispenser button on the fridge. I guess we'll have to start using the lock feature again.

But back to today. We then ran a few more errands where Addie continually tried to stand up while in the stroller, but thankfully didn't make it out. Apparently a good head crack was in the works, though, because at our last stop, she fell off the stool in the bathroom and landed hard on her back. Poor thing. She did wake up from the nap she took after that, so I think we're clear on the concussion front.

We have a couple more activities planned for tonight, and I hope she survives. It just doesn't seem to be her day. Or mine, for that matter.