How many of you have ever encountered a child that seems to find himself in trouble without any trouble at all?  Lucky for her, my daughter was 2-years old when my son was born.  If he had been born first, I'm not sure I would have had any more.  "That sounds terrible!" you might say.  Well, don't judge me too harshly, until you've spent a few minutes reading the following story about my small son. 

It all began when I remarried, three years after a very painful divorce.  Spencer had been a very sweet child, curious and huggable.  But one day everything changed . . . in a VERY big way.

Because he was too young for pre-school at the time and I was hunting for a job, we were thrown together each day for 10 hours of fun and frolic.  Spencer was one of those children that wanted to know the "why" of everything.  Among the ways that we entertained ourselves was reading, which we did daily.  Maybe that was the beginning of the end, because I think he made up stories in his own mind and then played them out on the big screen of my living space.

One morning I asked him if he wanted to help me clean the house.  He was all bright-eyed and excitedly jumped up into my lap.  We started downstairs, and when that area was finished, we headed upstairs.  I'd forgotten to take the dustpan with me and asked Spencer if he'd like to go and get it like a big boy.  He quickly ran down the stairs and out of sight.

He couldn't have been gone more than three minutes, when I called down to him, "Spencer, are you coming?"  He responded, "Yes, Mom.  I'm on my way!!"  And there he was.  It was so sweet to watch him climbing the stairs with the dustpan, doing just as I had asked him to do.  Once we finished sweeping and dusting upstairs, we went down to put the cleaning supplies away.  That was when it happened. . .

I immediately noticed the bottle of children's mult-vitamins on the counter.  I eyed the bottle in confusion, because I thought I'd returned them to the top shelf inside the cabinet after I gave them to the kids that morning.  I shrugged it off and picked up the vitamins and began to put them in the cabinet.  That's when I realized that there were lots of vitamins missing from the bottle, so I laid it down on the counter.  I then asked Spencer, "Honey, did you take one of these vitamins while you were down here?"  I knew he had, but he denied it.  So, I said, "Well, you did take one.  In fact, you took a bunch of them, didn't you?"  Finally, he agreed that he had taken some. 

Being the disciplinarian that I was, I scolded him and said, "I was going to let you skip your nap today because we're having so much fun, but now I think you must need one because you misbehaved."  Spencer amazingly didn't cry or complain.  He just said, "okay."  I took him upstairs and tucked him into bed.  He told me he was sleepy anyway.

When I went back downstairs, I shook my head as I picked up the multi-vitamin bottle.  I opened the "childproof" cap and counted the number of tablets remaining.  My son had ingested over 30 vitamins!!  Suddenly, there jumped off the label a very bold warning - Call Poison Control if Overdose Taken.  "Oh my gosh," I cried as ran next door to use the neighbor's phone.  I called the 1-800 number and someone answered immediately.  Frantically, I explained what had happened, and the man at the Poison Center said Spencer would be fine, but there were a couple of things I must do.

First, he told me I must get Ipecac from the local pharmacy, which would cause Spencer to vomit the vitamins.  This, of course, was difficult since I didn't have a car!  The second crucial thing was that I must not let my son fall asleep!!  I explained that I put him in for a nap not five minutes earlier.  The man urged me to run quickly, wake him up and keep him up until my husband arrived home with the Ipecac.

I ran next door and flew up the stairs.  There was my tiny boy sound asleep with his little hands nestled up next to his face.  I shook him, but he didn't wake.  I shook him again, but harder this time.  Finally, he ask, "Mom, what are you doing?  You told me to take a nap?"  I told him he had to wake up, which really aggravated him because he was sleeping so soundly - in fact he was semi-comatose. 

Then I remembered that my husband had to be called.  This time with a very sleepy 3-year old in tow, I ran next door again to call him.  I reached my husband's boss and explained everything to him.  He said he'd take care of it.  My husband worked about 20 minutes from the house, and I'm telling you the truth, it was not 20 minutes later when he arrived home with Ipecac in hand.  It's a wonder he didn't kill somebody racing as he did.

My husband and I bounded up the stairs to the bathroom.  I tried to explain to Spencer what was going to happen to him.  But, how do you explain vomitting to a child who's never done it?  Now comes the funny part.

If you know anything about Ipecac, it's that vomitting is induced pretty much immediately.  And violently.  I'm holding Spencer over the toilet, and he thinks I'm about to drown him in that nasty place.  He starts screaming that he's scared, and I'm trying to soothe him by telling him, "In a minute honey, you're going to get a little bellyache."  I just didn't want him to be surprised by it!
Suffice it to say that he removed the poison from within him in very short order.  And it totally freaked him out.  In between "episodes," he said, "Oh Mommy, I don't like this."  I'm not so cruel as to say, "well, if you hadn't . . . " but boy or boy I wanted to say it.

That afternoon, when my daughter came home from school, Spencer met her at the door.  He was still whimpering a bit when he told her, "Heather, don't ever take any pills that don't belong to you!"

Shortly after that we were visiting an elderly friend of ours, and she had her medicine on a lazy Susan turntable on her kitchen table.  Spencer eyed it from afar and said, "Don't touch it, Heather, or you'll have to puke!"

One lesson learned . . . at least temporarily.