Encounter: "Tomato"

There James-Boy was at the table, contentedly taking toys out from a metal box and putting them back in. Granted, the toys belonged to Thomas, so I alerted him. "It's fine, Mom," Thomas called. "He's not hurting them." So I went back to changing baby Genevieve. I glanced back to find James pulling apart what looked like red paper, and went to investigate. Ah, another cherry tomato, I thought as I drew closer.

James-Boy has been snitching cherry tomatoes from the garden during the last couple weeks. I've tried to discourage him, but haven't been completely strict simply because he and I are the only ones in the family who will even eat tomatoes, and he's done pretty well at choosing the ripe ones. Well, the boy may never want to eat a tomato again
. . . because it only LOOKED like one this time. By the time I put down Genevieve and got to James, he had taken several bites of one of Glenn's habernero peppers.

As he screamed and clawed at his burning mouth, I grabbed him and tried to use enough soap and baking soda to get rid of the habernero oil from his hands. I stuffed him in the highchair and gave him bread and milk. He started to calm down. OK, I thought. At least he didn't get it in his eyes. So I washed up my own hands and grabbed the crying Genevieve, only to put her down again as James renewed his screams at higher volume. Sure enough, he'd managed to rub habernero oil into his eyes.

Now he was wildly kicking, screaming, and making it worse by rubbing more oil into his eyes. I grabbed him, rewashed his hands, tried to hold them down at his sides and simultaneously run a bath, called for Glenn, and appreciatively saw Thomas pick up the still-crying Genevieve. By this time, my hands and forearms, which had contacted the oil briefly while cleaning James, were actively stinging - so I could only imagine the pain he was in!

Into the bath he went, and at Glenn's suggestion I added Aveeno oatmeal bath to it. The Aveeno package says it will do no harm if "accidentally ingested." Hopefully they mean "deliberately" as well: after a bit, the curiosity of James-Boy won over his pain and he grabbed at the globs of oatmeal to stuff them into his mouth. He seemed downright delighted at having gotten away with said action. I figured this did more good than harm and let him sprinkle more from the packet into the bath. He actually giggled (from his poor swollen, bright-pink face) as he made Aveeno "snow" fall on his bath toys.

A half-hour later (after more drama: why must toddlers poop in every bath that lasts longer than five minutes?), the swelling had gone down and there were only traces of pink across his face and under his eyes. This morning, you'd never know it had even happened. Hmm. Will this have inoculated him to spice, so that few things seems hot in comparison? Or will he shy away from all things the least bit spicy?

I'm thinking I'll still have to watch him around the tomatoes.