Yet another new way to start my day...or I'd rather shout at birds, thanks, than wake up to this....

Six-thirty am, in the electric heat of my bedroom where thin sunlight is smudged out by the dark curtains, I am brusquely awakened by the shock of cold hands on the backs of my bare legs. Graysen.
Coming slowly to awareness I can tell by the temperature of his hands that he has been up for a while. That he apparently snuck out of bed at some unknown point in time, leaving me to (finally) sleep soundly.
At the next level of awareness I sense that his hands are slightly damp. My first thought-the toilet. This makes me leap up, eyes still glued with sleep. Graysen loves water, and has no qualms about exploring that ever-present ceramic pool.
But then I notice he's holding something and shaking it lightly, and my concern about toilet water dissolves. I wrest a small white bottle away from him and feel my heart sink.
It's Soren's bottle of Singulair, and it's empty.
First, I fish around in his mouth. This offends him greatly, especially when I extract the soggy remnants of at least three pills. Then I scope out Soren's nightstand, and find a curious glass of thick pink goop. Being still half asleep I wonder if Soren concocted some strange drink in the wee hours of the morning. But then I notice that the floor is wet, and there is a small pile of partially dissolved pills on both the nightstand and mushed into the carpet. Beside the nightstand, Soren sleeps, unaware of what went down (literally) inches from his head.
"Soren," I say, shaking him gently. He stirs, tries to open his eyes. Fails.
"Sobie, wake up. I need to know how many Singulairs you had left."
"Uhhh..." he tries again to open his eyes. Succeeds. "I think a lot," he finally says, then succumbs to the gravitational pull of his pillow. I scoop up the soggy pills, grab the glass and pill bottle, and head in to do what must be done.
I have called Poison Control a handful of times. When Mirabai was two she licked some damp paint off a silkscreen. Fortunately, the paint proved to be non-toxic. Since that time I've called about ingested vitamins, Tylenol (as a formerly certified EMT that one really scared me!), toothpaste, and now this. Allergy pills.
The woman on the other end of the line when I call Poison Control sounds like she's short and has gray hair. I explain twice that I was sleeping when Graysen did this, and then wondered if that made it sound like I was a bad mother. I flashed on all the other things Graysen has done before-climbed up on the hearth and pulled all the ashes out of the fireplace...floated my mother's glass fishing floats in the toilet...dunked bread and then climbed INTO the toilet, with his shoes on...spilled a huge bag of M&Ms in the girl's room and then proceeded to eat a few handfuls of them before I caught up with his antics....
I began to wonder if I AM a bad mother.
I didn't dwell there long-what's the point? And I was relieved to find that Singulair is virtually harmless. The woman told me calmly to watch him for signs of excess thirst (this while he nursed-his fave activity) and note any signs of "hyperactivity." "Yeah," said I, "you're pretty much describing how my son behaves on a normal day."

So I proceeded to watch him a bit more closely. In between my watching (short moments, really, for bathroom breaks and snacks) Gray managed to get into the girls' Sea Monkey aquarium for fun swishing the microscopic "monkeys" in their pink plastic environs, followed closely by the heartrending push of my laptop off the footstool onto the floor. All before noon.

Then, we celebrated his remarkable achievements with some ketchupy hot dog fun followed by a nice long bath. And the afternoon stretched out ahead of us, full of possibility.