Soap Doesn't Taste as Good as Strawberry Cake

Kate ate dirt today.

Yep, dirt.

And I'm pretty sure she enjoyed it.

Yep, she enjoyed it.

Since she was old enough to grab things and put them in her mouth, regardless of my efforts to prevent it she's found ways to put all sorts of insane things in her mouth (rocks, sticks, crayons, playdoh, stickers, bugs, jewelry, etc), but until today I've always been able to swish out the non-food item before it was ingested.

She was playing outside at a friend's house this afternoon. I noticed her chewing. I walked over to see what she was chewing on and there was a brown, earthy-like residue on her lips and covering one of her front teeth in a classically hillbilly-esk fashion. I tried as calmly as possible to ask her to let me see inside her mouth. When she opened it up, I could see the dirt down in the crevices of all her bottom teeth, smeared across her tongue, and her spit was tinted a nice beige hue.

Good times.

Once I figured out it was ONLY DIRT (by making her open her mouth and smelling the "dirt" repeatedly), I got over the need to call her pediatrician. But what was more strange than catching her with dirt in her mouth, was the fact that after she knew I was distressed about it she still happily chomped away on her dirt chunk as I stood there with my mouth hanging open trying to recover from my shock so I could figure out what to do with her.

I took her over to the shrubs and asked her to spit - which was totally ineffectual since she's fortunately not perfected the craft of spitting like a ballplayer yet.

To figure out what happened so I could find the way to how best handle the situation, I asked her how she got dirt in her mouth. She looked me directly in the eyes and said with complete seriousness: "It's not dirt, Momma. It's strawberry birthday cake forever."

Definite points given for an active imagination, but then those points must be deducted for the insanity of lacking the common sense to know that no matter how much you want dirt to taste like strawberry cake you shouldn't put it in your mouth because your imagination didn't really make the dirt turn into cake.

Then I decided to take her inside to the bathroom. No spankings necessary because I really didn't think she was trying to act poorly - she just got carried away with her imagination. But what should I do with this crazy girl who is constantly eating things she shouldn't and literally LICKS random nasty public surfaces daily?!? I thought I might be able to teach her a lesson about how she shouldn't put germy things in her mouth if I tried to "clean" the dirt out.

I reached for the liquid handsoap on the bathroom sink. Gross I know, but I really need to find a way to teach her to stop doing things like this before she eats something really dangerous. I asked her to stick her tongue out. I squirted a generous portion onto her dirt stained tongue and asked her to keep her mouth open so I could clean the dirt out with the soap.

Are you cringing yet? I was. I couldn't believe I was actually about to wash my baby's mouth out with soap - but desperate times call for desperate measures. I thought there would be the inevitable tears, gnashing of teeth, and/or some sort of struggle so she would remember this experience and learn her lesson so neither of us had to go through this again.

No such luck.

She just sat there patiently waiting for me to finish. WHAT?!? I scrubbed on her tongue. I got the remaining dirt particles out of the spaces under her tongue and between her gums and cheeks. I even spent a little time trying to get some of the dirt off her teeth. She looked rabid because of the soapy lather I'd worked up coming out of the corners of her mouth. All this with absolutely no negative reaction from the girl. She actually laughed after she sneezed and a huge soap bubble sprang out of her mouth.

So I finished up, wiped the outside of her mouth, and she asked if we could go back outside. I was still dumbfounded by the girl who had no reaction to dirt or liquid handsoap in her mouth, so I agreed. On our way back outside to rejoin our friends she looked up at me and said: "Soap doesn't taste as good as strawberry cake. I want strawberry cake for my birthday."