Tuesday, April 29, 2008

How To Extract Top Secret Info from Spies

How to Extract Top Secret Information From Spies

I can tell you in one step. Put a 2 year old hopped up on cough medicine in the bed with them.

Let me explain how I acquired this information. This past weekend was LONG. It was mostly super fun stuff but there was no time to stop and by the time Sunday night rolled around we couldn't wait to get into bed. Immediately after putting the girls to bed we got in our bed, turned on the TV and began to zone out. My husband was asleep by 9:30 and I was asleep by about 10:00. About an hour later we woke up to our 2 year old coughing incessantly and decided to give her some cough medicine. Wait...let me back up a minute.

On Saturday morning at around 8:00am, Little Sister was really hacking and had a pretty stuffy nose so my husband went to the kid's medicine cabinet. He found these neat little cough & cold strips that you just stick on their tongues and the strips just melt away. Sounds brilliant, right? If you've ever tried to give an irritated toddler cough medicine you know why this sounded like a Pulitzer prize winner. We have a nighttime version and a daytime version so he wisely gave her the daytime version. When I came into the kitchen he proudly told me how Little Sister was coughing but he'd taken care of it and given her one of the strips. This is how the conversation went from there:

Me: A WHOLE strip?
Him: (Eyes wide now) Yeah...why?
Me: (Eyes also wide) They're for ages 6 and up.
Him: Why are they in with the other kid medicine?
Me: I don't know, I bought the wrong thing and I didn't want to throw them away. They were expensive. Why didn't you read the label? (I know...this was a stupid question)
Him: Why would I read the label? You take out a strip, you put it on the kid's tongue, what else is there? Is she going to be okay?
Me: I guess. I don't know. We probably just need to watch her.

So that's what we did all day. We watched her. We watched her stumble around. We watched her stare into space. We watched as she asked, "Can.......I.......have.....anana?" And then we watched as she stared with intensity at that banana. Basically, the girl was hammered. For about 5 hours. It looked very similar to this experience. She went down for a nap (easily of course) and woke up fine and dandy but still with a cough and yucky nose. We threw away the other medicine and got some age appropriate medicine. The non-drowsy kind. Which brings me back to the perfect means of torturing spies for information.

So Sunday night we give her the "new" cough medicine at 11:00pm. Little did we know that "non-drowsy" really meant "get ready 'cause this kid is about to kick your $@#!!". Never mind that we actually woke up this ticked off toddler to force the medicine into her body...so we could sleep. Oh the irony. About an hour later I woke up to little sister staring me in the face. I picked her up, carried her upstairs, put her in her bed, told her to stay there, and went back to bed. About ten minutes after that she was back. I repeated the above steps two more times and then she started going to Daddy's side of the bed. Daddy was asleep. No comment. The next time I caught her on the stairs and gave her some discipline before leaving her in her bed. Less than ten minutes later I heard movement again. I went upstairs to find her completely naked and headed out to do heaven knows what. That's when I gave up. I figured better to have her in my bed and know that she was diapered, clothed, and safe. That's when the REAL torture began.

For the next several hours she waited until I began to drift and would then proceed to poke me in the eye and say with all cheeriness, "EYES!" Sometimes she would stand up and start jumping on the bed, sometimes she would kick me in the kidney, sometimes she would try to sit on my head, sometimes she would say over and over, "Whas sat?" (What's that?) At about 1:30am Daddy left to sleep on the couch. I am telling you, in all seriousness, that by 3:00am I would have told the enemy anything they wanted to know if they would just GET THIS KID OUT OF MY BED AND LET ME SLEEP! I actually thought about digging that other cough medicine out of the trash at one point. I thought to myself, "I'll just let her kick me and poke me because I'm so tired I think I can maybe sleep through it." No such luck. The child finally collapsed into a deep snoring slumber at exactly 4:33am. Exactly 4:33am. I know. I looked. I'm a stay-at-home mom and it would have been tolerable if I could have slept in the next morning. Unfortunately, Big Sister usually gets up shortly after 6:00am.

Well, I made it through that night and the next Monday without killing anyone, with cough medicine or otherwise. Needless to say, we let the child cough the next night. She was pretty much over it by then anyway. What's the moral of the story?

Read the label.
If you bought the wrong thing, get rid of it.
Read the label.
Understand what the label means.
Read the label again and then let them cough anyway, especially if they are asleep.


I'd love to hear your one-liners.

11 comments:

Anonymous said...

Great story.

Benadryl.

I've found a great friend in Benadryl. We look for any and every reason to give it to our kids. Especially Selah. You're likely to get a good 12+ hours out of her if she's sick and you give her some of that.

Tracy Brothers said...

Ashley, good to know, good to know. Wow, that will come in handy. I might need to make a run to the drugstore tonight.

Welcome to our crazy blessed life said...

Oh. My. Goodness. I am crying from laughing so hard. We have so been there sister! I was reading this out loud to Bobby and he said he ran upstairs and caught our Little Man walking around with my curling iron and no pants!

Susan said...

This is too funny although I'm quite certain it was not funny at 3am when it was happening. I busted out laughing when you said "Daddy was asleep. No comment."
We do Benadryl also- although sometimes I think it can have an opposite affect on Aidan.

Montee said...

This is hilarious! This would happen to us too when the children were little. They love the poking in the eyes thing when you are trying to sleep. I was always nervous whenever I gave Britnee the "Night Time, helps you sleep" medicines. Have you ever noticed they state on the "Night Time, Helps You Sleep" boxes that this could make the children hyper? "Night Time" is false advertising. These meds would always make Britnee wild as a buck. Of course Phillip would sleep through all of this. Britnee would always come to my side of the bed or climb up on me just talking away. Brett seldom had this reaction but a couple of years ago he scared me. He had injured his back playing football so Dr. Phillip decided to administer some prescription muscle relaxers that Dr. Phillip was in possession of. My son slept on the couch and did not move for an entire day. Scared me to death! I would watch to make sure he was still breathing. I would wake him for a second and he would be high as a kite. His fingernails and toenails were really long and I was trying to tell him he needed to cut them. He said, "Okay," and then sleep again. I just got the clippers and cut them myself, he never knew. Brett finally was able to communicate that evening. He said that was the best medicine he had ever taken. I guess so! he was on some sort of groovy trip! Maybe Dr. Phillip and Dr. Jeff should open their own practice! They would be the "feel good" physicians.

Anonymous said...

LOL!! I'm still laughing...I've totally been there,until we were introduced to...

M-END

It's an AWESOME prescription cold med. that WORKS EVERYTIME!!! It's a total sleep saver-ha!!
AmyS

Jenny Neeley said...

I'm with Amy - M-END is the way to go, although you have to get a script. I'm pretty sure it's a Codeine-based drug. Before Anna Kate's adenoids were removed, M-END was the only way Blake and I got sleep. oh, yes - it's a decongestant, too.

Jennifer said...

Totally hilarious! Ben-tann is great...it is prescription and is basically benadryl with a decongestant. It works very well. Also the nightime pediacare formula is great. Just watch out for the opposite effect with benadryl...some kids get totally wired on it. Good luck and I hope you sleep tonight! Hey I finally started a blog. www.chrisjenniferava.blogspot.com

Anonymous said...

Oh my gosh, I am so tired from laughing so hard!! You are so funny. I read it all outloud to my husband too. We sympathize with you. We have had our kidneys kicked many a time.

As a pharmacist, however, I have to caution you on sharing other people's prescription drugs and not reading the label for dosing instructions :)

Anonymous said...

Tracy,
This blog is becoming famous. My mom, stephanie, and ashley smith both told me to go read this. Trevis and I were dying laughing. I had to stop for a minute just to stop coughing that was leading into an asthma attack! Thank you for making my night, you really sacrificed for our enjoyment!
Courtney Smith

carriehayes said...

Tracy! this is so hilarious! i can totally relate to the eyes poking part...i am still laughing about it! i need to order some of that M-END that Amy and Jenny are talking about!