Tazmania: the Tooth Fairy vs. Poison Control. . .

Never a dull moment in our special needs house. Each little joy is always mixed with a healthy dose of reality.

My 6.5-year-old has been waiting not so patiently for his first tooth to fall out so he could leave it for the tooth fairy. This afternoon, he came screaming up the stairs proudly holding his bloody tooth. "I bit an apple and it yanked out my tooth."

I tried to convince Taz to give me the tooth for safe-keeping but he wouldn't part with it. I was sure he'd lose it before bedtime, but he kept that tooth in his little paw until he put in under his pillow after his bath.

An so, we began the great wait for the tooth fairy, which naturally was rudely interrupted by my discovery of two Sam's Club size bottles of gummy vites, which went from more than half full each to less than a quater full in the past 2-3 days i.e. somewhere between 75 and 100 missing vitamins.

I tried to tell his Dad a couple of nights ago that those bits of colored gooey things under the kitchen desk looked suspiciously like gummy vites, not some long lost fruit snack that Taz dug out of the pantry.

Tonight he finally agreed.

When I called poison control, they calculated the potential overdose and informed me that he could very well have consumed a toxic amount of vitamin A.

Luckily for Taz, the vitamins don't contain iron, he has no classic symptoms of vitamin A poisoning and, he consumed the vitamins over a few days. So he's probably okay. They recommended no more vitamins for at least a month. More like a year, if you ask me.

Dad, was relieved to hear that we avoided another trip to the ER, then asked why those darn bottles don't have child proof caps. I calmly reminded him that Taz was the only child in pre-K, who could open all six of the supposedly child proof caps during a in-class poison control demonstration.

He also knows how to open all of our locked cabinets, even though half of them have combination locks. He watched his Dad open them once and memorized the combinations. I tried changing them. It didn't help.

And so we are back to the tooth fairy, which, as always, Taz is determined to do to the extreme. He went to bed and promptly yanked out another tooth so that he could have a two-fer tonight.

Nothing is ever simple in our house.

Nianya