Coming Soon to a Child's Stomach Near You...

Every parent quickly learns this lesson about young kids: anything they can grab is going straight to their mouth.

My son taught this to us over and over when he was small. While we managed to keep most truly dangerous objects out of his grasp, we did have a few scares. One night a large but nonvenomous house spider (leg-to-leg span = 3 inches) ran across the living room floor and stopped right in front of our son. To our horror, he reached out and grabbed it.

Reacting quickly, the paternal unit did a stuntman dive across 10 feet of carpet and pinned his hand to the floor -- Dad's next conscious thought being "How the hell am I going to get something out of his hand that I'm afraid to touch?"

As this was happening, the maternal unit came really, really close to declaring an instant end to breast-feeding. Her exact words were something like "Lips that touch spider will not touch my..."

Somehow we solved this dilemma, and breast-feeding continued as before. However, this incident made us even more vigilant about the hand-to-mouth issue.  Since my spouse is a pediatrician, we both deal with this problem professionally as well.

When a kid ingests a foreign object, the drill goes something like this:

1. a quick X-ray of their tummy is taken to document the presence/location of the item
   
2. parents undergo the character-building exercise of straining every stool specimen for the next few days
   
3. if everything does not come out all right (so to speak), another X-ray is done
   
4. repeat 2 & 3 for a while until the object is out
   
5. if no luck, move on to Plan B (endoscopy or surgery)

With this in mind, you can imagine the instant rapport I felt with this parent's polemic on a new Kellogg's Lego fruit-flavored snack. The money quote:

I would love to know what sick bastard at Kellogs came up with this genius idea. I just spent the first three years of my sons life trying to get him not to eat blocks, and now you're telling him they taste like fucking strawberries. Thanks a lot assholes. Seriously, how in the hell did this ever get past their legal department. You can't tell me that this isn't a lawsuit just waiting to happen. I can only assume that their next product is fruit flavored thumbtacks.

(via Daring Fireball)