Poison Control - 1.800.222.1222

I got the privilege of calling them today. (everyone is fine)

Andrew was upstairs going 'potty' for a long time very quietly. Too quietly. In fact, I even yelled upstairs, "Andrew, what are you doing?". When "Nothing!" was the reply, I called him down immediately. "Nothing" is not the right answer.

So he comes down happy as can be, but with a distinct fruity medicin-y smell on his breath. I ask him if he was eating upstairs. I get a big eyed look, "No.". I pick him up and tell him we are going upstairs to look. This is where he starts throwing a fit and crying about how he wants down and doesn't want to go upstairs, which is unlike him - he really is mostly past the 'fit' stage. This was also a dead give away that something was up.

I got upstairs and find a bag of Halls cherry cough drops with six empty wrappers. Now he was only out of sight for less than 5 minutes - so he must have crunched or swallowed them to get down six in that amount of time and still go potty. I confront him again and he confesses that he ate the 'candy'. Then he adds, "I didn't do it on purfuss, it was an accident!" (This is where I had to turn my back and cover my mouth in order to maintain my authority and not burst out laughing).

The entire time he is acting completely healthy, but I start thinking that there is menthol in them and they really aren't created for three year olds. So I actually googled, "cough drop overdose" and believe it or not - got nothing relevant. I decided I rather call poison control and know for sure that there is nothing to be concerned about and sure enough there is not. The very kind, helpful person on the other line took all our information and told me that while she would not recommend him eating 6 cough drops on a regular basis, this one time event should not be a problem and we can 'go about our usual business'.

Needless to say, Andrew got a stern talking to about eating something without permission and mommy got a wake up call about leaving out seemingly innocent medicines (trust me - the 'hard stuff' is childproofed).