Little Big Boy

I took Lucas in for his 18 month check up last week and the doctor confirmed what we already knew - that he is healthy and smart and charming and perfect. He is now 25lbs (30th percentile) and 31 inches (25th percentile) so he is on the smaller side of the spectrum for both of those things but he is continuing to grow at a perfectly healthy rate. He was extremely friendly (not surprisingly) with the nurses, doctor and families in the waiting room and everyone cooed about what a cutie and charmer our little red-head is. He was very displeased that the nurse stuck him with multiple needles (and actually sorta held a grudge about it for a bit) but all was forgiven once the Winnie the Pooh stickers came out.

Lucas is in the bizarro stage right now where is no longer a baby and does tons of "big boy things" (like communicating his needs/wants, doing things by himself, using a fork....) but still has plenty of baby tendencies. One of those tendencies is putting things that are not food into his mouth. Elise breezed in and out of the oral fixation stage before she even turned a year old, so this lingering phase is a whole new world to me. He eats random things that I KNOW he knows he shouldn't eat, but still does - perhaps just to drive me crazy but more likely because he simply cannot help himself. You still have to keep a fairly close eye on him, especially outside, as he tends to put rocks, wood chips, leaves and pine cones into his mouth whenever possible. And the boy loves him some crayons. As gross as he thinks they are (he always makes a grossed out face) he just can't resist chewing on them and we have about 65 half chewed crayons to prove it!

But despite this, he has never really eaten anything that was actually life threatening or dangerous ...that is, until this weekend. Early Saturday morning the kids were playing a game that involved running in and out of rooms and slamming doors while I was reading the paper. They were having so much fun - laughing and squealing - and I was having fun catching up with what was happening in the world, when suddenly, Elise appeared in front of me and reported that Lucas was "drinking something really gross in the bathroom." I immediately went to investigate and discovered that our little guy pulled the toilet bowl brush out of it's little toilet bowl brush cup and drank the contents of the toilet bowl brush cup. I kid you not. Grossest thing ever? Quite possibly.

A quick scan of the warnings on the Lysol toilet bowl cleaner (Warning! Ingestion may cause serious harm or death!) led me to call Poison Control to make sure that I shouldn't rush him to the nearest hospital to get his stomach pumped. Turns out that any amount that he possibly could have ingested (not very much) was diluted enough that it wasn't poisonous - just might burn his mouth and throat. Phew! It was quite a terrifying adventure and Lucas' breath smelled like Lysol for a few hours but everything thankfully turned out fine in the end.

And now we are doing a re-evaluation of what it means to childproof for our little boy!