Kids sure do make things interesting.
Both of my kids are precocious, smart, and far too stubborn for their own good. Or my good, as it were. They are by no means docile – they are far too creative and curious to leave alone for any significant amount of time.
Or – in the case of my three-year-old – for even one second.
Exhibit A
My wife was gone for the weekend for a web series shoot, so I had the kids. My 7 year old daughter Addie was doing her own thing, so my main focus was my three-year-old son JJ. JJ is going through potty training. Peeing, he’s pretty much got down. We bought him a little wall-hanging plastic urinal that he uses on his own now and absolutely loves. Easy-peasy. He doesn’t even bother us in the morning to go pee. Pooping is another story… but in the following instance he’d already gone earlier in the day, so I thought I was safe.
I left JJ to play in the little play area that used to be our living room while I got a couple quick music promotion tasks done in the office (a mere twenty feet away). Between ad campaign checkups I overheard JJ say something like “racing through the pee”. At first I thought I was just hearing things – that he was just doing some silly race thing with his cars like he usually does – but that was stupid of me. After hearing him express something similar a couple minutes later I finally got up to see what was going on.
What I found was that he had peed his pants all over the floor and that he was pretty much sitting in it, racing his cars around through it.
Okay… knowing what I know about my kids, it was dumb of me to leave him alone. At the same time it was absolutely baffling why he had decided to do that. But… whatever. I cleaned it up, threw out a couple of his toys (he was completely unawares and he has a million of them).
I also vowed I wouldn’t leave him alone again while I worked in the office.
Exhibit B
Another weekend with my wife gone – this time to Atlanta.
I left JJ to play in the little play area that used to be our living room while I got a couple quick music promotion tasks done in the office (a mere twenty feet away). Between ad campaign checkups and some promotion submissions I noticed a distinct and unusual silence. No sound. So I got up to see what was going on. If this were Addie, I would have suspected that JJ had just passed out for a nap wherever he was, but that wasn’t his way of doing things – if he was tired, he’d have gone up to his room and laid down.
What I found was that he had left the room, gone outside to the back yard, and left the door open.
That last part’s a big deal because we have four cats. And, like our kids, our cats are very curious. (I think I see now where the kids get it from).
Naturally, I panicked and went out onto the deck. Our orange cat, Calvin, scurried and scraped back into the house in terror, his curiosity having gotten the better of him. I immediately communicated to Addie to count the cats (which she did, concluding none had escaped).
Meanwhile, I found JJ at the large tree swing just chilling. Naked.
Okay… knowing what I know about my kids, it was dumb of me to leave him alone. I vowed never to do that again while I worked in the office.
Exhibit C
Later that night…
I left JJ to play in the little play area that used to be our living room while I got a couple quick music promotion tasks done in the office (a mere twenty feet away). Between ad campaign checkups and some promotion submissions I heard… well… something akin to normal sounds and activities. I finished up my self-imposed assignments and came out to find that everything seemed to be in order.
Seemed.
About an hour later while I was getting the kids ready for bed, Addie pointed out that there was hand sanitizer all over her desk (which resides in the afore-mentioned playroom). I took a deep breath and looked. Sure enough, two bottled of hand sanitizers had been mostly-dispensed all over the desk. And the floor. JJ’s cars were strewn throughout.
Panic set in. What if he had eaten some of this? He tried to when he was a year or so younger. What if he had done so now?!
So I grabbed him. “JJ, did you eat this?”
He nodded.
I started to freak out.
“How much did you eat?”
“Because I was doing a car wash.”
“Can you show me how you ate it?”
“No I’m washing the cars.”
“So did you eat it?”
“No.”
“Are you sure?”
“No.”
“So you did eat it?”
“Yes.”
“Can you show me how much?”
“I’m washing my cars.”
This was already not looking good.
I didn’t want my three-year-old to be poisoned, so I put on a gruff voice. “How much did you drink?!”
All the sudden I’d turned into Batman. And I was interrogating my son.
The phone rang. My wife was calling. I answered the FaceTime call, not trying to hide my exasperation even a little bit. She talked me down from a ledge, which was easy to do once her friend – a formerly certified EMT – explained that if I took him to the hospital, for the most part all they’d do is watch and give him water. So I gave JJ lots of water and lots of apple juice – something sweet to keep him from dehydrating (if, in fact, he had actually imbibed some of the hand sanitizer).
My wife observed that JJ did not appear to be acting different. He seemed his regular self – indeed, being super difficult about answering simple questions. There was no indication he’d ingested any of this stuff, and neither his breath nor his face smelled as if or otherwise suggested he’d had any.
We decided I’d monitor him for the next couple hours and ended the call.
I soon got JJ to bed and kept an eye on him, getting up every hour or so to check on him, and losing a lot of sleep. He made it through fine, again with no indications he’d actually had any hand sanitizer in his system. He acted as much himself that morning as he had any other.
But boy… did I lose a lot of sleep. And my voice.
Therefore, I vowed I would never leave JJ alone again while I worked in the office.