A first (and hopefully last) time calling Poison Control!

Never a dull moment with three-year-old Anne, let me tell you...

We spent a good part of the day at the beach and just playing outside while Marty got a TON of painting done upstairs at the cottage (looks great, by the way, honey!) Unfortunately, I dropped the ball in my only real duty up here, looking out for the well-being of my only daughter. I can add to my list of "I'm a horrible mother" mistakes (which includes letting Anne get her fingers cut by a fan at 15 months and not buckling her carseat two times this past spring).

Anyway, we were across the street just before dinner tonight and Anne was eating blackberries off the bushes with the little neighborhood boys. I am personally very bothered by eating unwashed fruit, but everyone around here just eats them off the bushes. Well, Anne thinks this is just so much fun (and loves to eat anyway). Just as we were saying our good-byes to the boys to go home for dinner, Anne and Emerson pick some berries from another bush. Oliver, Emerson's 7-year-old brother, manages to prevent Emerson from eating the berries, but I, Anne's almost 32-year-old mother, cannot stop Anne in time. I'm PRETTY sure she didn't actually swallow a berry, but she definitely bit into it and swallowed some juice before I got her to spit it out.

So the next half an hour was spent searching the Internet for information about poisonous berries (while mom's tuna casserole dinner was getting cold). Finally, I called Poison Control. Turns out that even for toxic berries, they don't worry unless 3 or more berries have been consumed. I'm about 99% sure she didn't actually swallow a berry but I'm still not completely comforted by this. It will probably be a few days before I stop worrying! She ate a good dinner and big ice cream cone tonight though and is now sleeping soundly.

I'm sure my mother never had to call Poison Control. Julie, Briana, and I never even had stitches or broken bones as kids either. That just seems like a miracle to me. Of course, we weren't even allowed to do somersaults in the backyard, no wonder we never got hurt! Although, I can't believe we used to climb that huge tree in the backyard on Pleasant! Maybe we were just lucky!

Marty's mom made me feel better though. She had to call Poison Control on Marty TWICE! He had to have his stomach pumped once for eating too many Flintstone vitamins and once for too many Baby Tylenol! And he's had plenty of stitches over the years as well!

I think I'll check on Anne once again and have my nightly bowl of ice cream!