Bright Red Berries

Before you read any further, she's fine. That's never a good opening, is it?

Today, on the Summer Solstice, the Tiny Overlord and I were outside playing. Before I could stop her, she picked up a bright red berry and popped it in her mouth. Now, I happen to know that these are Mock Strawberries, and they're edible, or at least not harmful. But the speed at which she managed to get a wild berry into her mouth was terrifying. I literally couldn't stop her, even though I was within arm's reach.

I figured that I had to teach her a lesson right away. I yelled at her, which I almost never do (an exception would have been the diaper rash ointment incident, see June 14). I also immediately washed her mouth out with the hose. I must have made an impact, because she looked really scared and started to cry. A lot of times, if she's in trouble she'll cry, but only for a few seconds. This time she cried for several minutes while sitting in my lap, with me holding her. Once she was calmed down, we talked about it. I found more mock strawberries and asked her if she could eat them. She said yes so we repeated most of the process. The next time she said "No bite. No eat." I hugged her and told her that was right.

We discussed that she should only eat things that Daddy and I gave her or if we told her that it was okay to eat it. Then we came inside and I double and triple checked my information.

Later in the evening, as Daddy was making dinner and Summer was playing in the living room by the firewood left over from winter, she suddenly grabbed something and ate it. I grabbed her arm and told her "Let mommy see what you ate." She shook her head No, so I squeezed her cheeks and forced her mouth open. I hadn't seen anything on the floor that should be eaten and I was afraid that she had grabbed something off of the wood, otherwise I wouldn't have reacted so strongly. I was able to see and smell that it was a Cheerio that she must have dropped earlier.

By this time she was scared and crying again. Daddy and I both held her and explained that we weren't mad and that we still loved her, but some things could hurt her and we had to be sure that she wasn't eating anything that would make her sick.

After all of the excitement of the afternoon and evening, she was pretty tired, so we put her to bed right after dinner. We're both watching her on the monitor.