Saturday, May 26, 2007

Sand testing: all clear

Just an update here and a big thank you to everyone who has wished us well over the past weeks.

The day I posted the last post, we had a slightly sandy nappy which I thought was just the advance guard however as he is now passing seeds from the bread he had several days later, either he's got serious retention issues or all the sand went through already! So for anyone considering feeding their child sand, go right ahead.

The croup is over and he's now sleeping in his own bed again - all the way through last night which is brilliant.

He's asleep now and I am avoiding the house-cleaning. Now that he's crawling everywhere and is enthusiastically digging into all sorts of corners and places the light normally never sees (I am constantly amazed by the places his fingers can get and the things he is interested in moving) I realise that I must turn from being a '2' on the 'Slattern to Super-Mum' scale up to at least an '8'. So far, these are the things I have had to remove from his mouth in the past three days and which clearly should have been vacuumed, polished or tidied away:

- Carpet Lint
- The mulched-up corner of a paper flyer that fell out of a magazine
- A little black dry thing that could once have been part of a banana skin
- More carpet Lint
- Part of a mulched-up magazine page
- Cat food
- Kleenex
- A pen lid
- A packet of silica gel he dug out of a camera case.

Where he found them? Who knows. Under the armchair? Behind the kitchen bin? Why does he think they are edible? Because they're bite-sized? Who knows. Either way, today the entire place gets sucked clean of anything remotely confusing for a hungry baby. A quick note lest you think I am entirely careless, the packet of silica gel was half empty and I did put in a call to poison control. Their diagnosis was 'relax' (You try it...). We found most of the contents on the floor later and whatever he ate must also have passed into his nappy by now... as my Dad pointed out, he ate a load of silica in the sand a few days back so why worry?

Everyone told us we were going to have to 'put things up'. 'Oh, now it's time to Put Things Up'. 'Everything's Got To Go Up now' they say. We were thinking that we'd try to avoid this but it's clear that at least for a while, some things have to go out of reach. Particularly if they are silver and have buttons on them like, for example, telephones and remote contols. Given the array of remote controls in this house (I think there are six in the living room alone) and the number of cordless digital and mobile phones running rampant in every room, this is like the Spud being sent on a technical version of an Easter Egg hunt every day and every day finds him standing taller and reaching farther into the recesses of shelves and tables where little clusters of digital flotsam are huddled away from drool and prying hands.

I thought it would be simple to buy toy versions of all these things and it is, but only in primary coloured plastic which is no use to us at all as Charlie knows immediately that they Don't Do Anything and are not out-of-bounds. So, I am shortly going to go to a pound shop and buy several of those cheap 'all in one' remote controls and scatter them temptingly around the house without any batteries in them for him to play with. It's the only solution.

12 comments:

Chris King said...

Ah! Eating sand is a cure for croup! Bottle it and market it!!

Aku said...

You're such a clever mom with those remote controls! Do you think you can fool your child with those? I think he's way too clever to fall for that... :D

lady macleod said...

i think it will occupy him for a while, but I can tell you that your brain will continue to have a workout staying one step ahead. Think of the positives = you will have a clean house and a possible detriment to any senile diseases.

Hide some of those controls under the cushions and behind the computer.

lady macleod said...

you know I think that should read diseases of senility, not confused diseases.

Sparx said...

LOL! It's too late to prevent diseass of senility in this house... even the resident diseases are senile

Abhishek said...

wait till the baby grows up, then a trip to the beach will ensure at least an afternoon nap!

The Good Woman said...

Good ol' prunes!

Your remote control plan worked for us. And then Bambi threw my mobile phone into the washing machine (just wait till the spud gets to the 'posting' stage!) which came out clean but very ill. So now she gets to poke around with that too.

DJ Kirkby said...

Excellent idea about the real but battery free remotes! You should write a book... hmmm I am starting to repeat myself...must be my age...or lack of sleep...

jenny said...

I am here to tell you that the fake remote trick didnt work with our girlies. They were on to us when we didnt chase them down because they had the remote. I think they just liked the chase more than the actual remote!

Nothing like a baby with bloodhound instincts to make you clean the house a little more than usual. Wait til you look under the bed!!

Sparx said...

Hmmm... the spud has already rejected a remote which we have given him to play with... clearly it's the 'forbidden' part which is the most tempting!!!

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Samantha said...

Sparx, sorry - no go for the battery-less remotes here. 3 boys, none of them fell for it. Mr. 6 yr old did find them tremendously fun to flush down the toilet. Be forwarned - that stage is coming soon to a loo near you!