Cooking with toddler gone wrong

I recently read a very convincing article online that said "Let your children cook in the kitchen with you, sure it may be a little messy and may take longer, but they love it, and it is good bonding time." or something like that.

"What a great idea!!" I thought.

On Friday, Kyler helped me make breakfast biscuits for dinner. It's a simple recipe: refrigerated biscuits put in muffin tins with eggs, meat and cheese then baked. I thought it would be perfect for little helping hands. Kyler loved helping. He especially loved squishing the biscuit dough like play-doh. All of his little comments and interpretations about what I was doing were hilarious. We were off to a good start.

 When I got to the part in the recipe that involved cracking the eggs... Kyler of course wanted to hold an egg.

"Be soft" I told him.

I cracked a few eggs and glanced over at him...he was mimicking me by ever so softly shaking his precious egg clutched in his tiny hands, being very careful. It was so cute I called Jared over to watch Kyler "crack" his egg. 

But Kyler didn't "ever so softly shake his egg carefully" this time. He squeezed it instead.

Jared grabbed the camera just in time, and jokingly asked me what I was thinking when I gave our 2 year old an egg. Luckily, I was standing right next to Kyler and was able to prevent the egg from falling onto the floor, but it did, however, get all over his clothes.

After I washed our hands, sanitized the counters, and changed Kyler into clean clothes, we were back in the kitchen. THIS time I decided it would be best if Kyler stayed on the floor while I cracked the last egg.

As I cracked the last egg, I laughed to myself thinking about what a horribly messy idea cooking with kids in the kitchen was....and in that very second I heard an ear piercing goose-bump raising scream coming from Kyler who was standing behind me with his hand in a drawer.

"Oh no! He shut his finger in the drawer" was my first thought.

I gave him a hug and told him that it as okay, but he continued to scream -that ear piercing scream- which is very unusual for him.

Then, I noticed the the drawer that I thought he had shut his finger in was still hanging wide open. If he had shut his finger in the drawer it shouldn't be open that wide- I thought.

Next, I noticed what was actually in the drawer. The potato slicer.

I removed his arms that were clutched around my neck, and I saw blood coming from his left hand. I got really squeamish and yelled for Jared to come help. I'm so glad that Jared was home. I probably would have cried if I was alone. haha.

After applying pressure and several paper towels, the bleeding slowed down and we were able to see the cut (about a half inch wide) on his thumb. It was deep, but wasn't horrible looking. We didn't know if it would need stitches or not. We put a band-aid on it after the bleeding slowed down, and Kyler stopped crying. The bandaid didn't work too well:

 We decided to call our health insurance's 24/7 nurse line. Jared described to the nurse what happened, how long it bled for, and what it looked like now. She suggested that we take him in to urgent care, because he would probably benefit from a few stitches. I felt so bad for having a potato slicer in my drawer. We used to have child locks on all of our cabinets at our previous rental house, but we haven't had any issues with Kyler playing in cabinets or drawers since we moved to this house. Lesson learned.

At the urgent care Kyler was charming all of the nurses with his cute smile while talking up a storm! I started to wonder why we had brought him in because he seemed too happy to be at the doctors, but then I looked down at his finger and it had started bleeding through his band aid again (an hour later). What kid smiles like this with a sliced open finger while at the doctors office? Kyler!

Rather than terrorize Kyler with stitches, the doctor decided to use liquid stitches (pretty much skin glue) as an alternative, which works just as good stitches (for a cut on a child's thumb), but is faster. The doctor did an anesthetic injection on his finger before using the glue. While we were waiting for his finger to go numb, Kyler went to town with a highlighter that Jared had in his pocket.

Here is his finger all glued together! Let's just say Kyler wont be cooking in the kitchen with me anytime soon.

The doctor said to not submerge his thumb in water for 2 weeks, but that's nothing a plastic bag can't fix... the beach last weekend was awesome!

When we put a bag on Kyler's hand he got really excited (to my surprise) and said:

 "A sleeping bag for my hand!" 

For the record we discovered latex gloves work best for keeping water out.

Now every night before bath time, Kyler asks me for his "hand sleeping bag". I'm so glad he doesn't complain about having to wear a rubber glove every time he is near water!