Good evening, poison control! Call # 16

The kids were finally settled down for the night and I drug myself down the basement to check my 53652 e-mails that I will probably be able to respond to a year from now. 10 minutes later, the shrieking begins. Since Michael has recently learned how to vault out of his crib and rappel down the side, I assumed he may have had a crash landing. But no, that's not what happened at all.

Michael was somehow sleeping soundly and Nick was sitting on the bathroom floor surrounded by make up and...nail polish. The nail polish had been living on a top shelf of the medicine cabinet. But my boys have mad climbing skills so nothing is safe. Nick decided that since his nails were already painted, that maybe nail polish would be good at making other body parts beautiful, like his lips, cheeks...and his left eye. So after flushing his eye with water for what seemed like an eternity, probably to both of us, he could at least open his eye again and it wasn't hurting so much. I used nail polish remover on the parts not touching his eye and rinsed him off with water, had a discussion about how toxic substances are BAD, yet again, and then I put him to bed. Then I called poison control. They should have frequent flyer miles for people like me. And we should earn spa days for having exceptionally challenging, precocious children. They probably do, but instead of the spa days, I will probably earn a visit from Child Protective Services for my abnormally high average of calls to their service.

So, this is what I learned. Eye polish is very bad for eyes, if it gets in the eye. They wanted to know if it had touched his eye. From the screaming I am guessing yes, but after holding upside-down like a bat over the tub and dousing his eye with water for many minutes, I don't know for sure. He didn't open his eye until 5 minutes of water dumping and I am actually surprised that so much water left his eyeball in there. Nick looks like he has pink eyeliner on, both above and below his eye. I wasn't about to add nail polish remover in his eye to lead to call #17 to poison control, so I left it there. He is looking fancy...or kind of diseased, depending on your perspective. By the time we finished cleaning him up, he said his eye didn't hurt anymore and he could see. So when they told me it was a judgement call to take him to the ER for an eye exam to make sure he was okay, I decided he was. My kids are loud when they are not okay. He was quiet and exhausted. Although, that could have been from inhaling the nail polish remover fumes for so long, so I am not sure.

Oh yeah, and I think Michael ate a marble tonight too. He could breathe so I figured he was okay. I was just glad it wasn't anything pointy or a neighborhood pet or something like that.

Happy Monday, everyone! :)