Our decorating eggsperience

On Saturday we decorated our Easter eggs. I was laying everything out on the table and the kids were all excited for it. I thought it would be fun for the kids to watch the food coloring tablets fizz when you add the vinegar to them, so I put a tablet in each cup around the table and was then preparing to measure out the vinegar when the next thing I knew, Kitty was coughing and gagging on something. I picked her up and was trying to look in her mouth, trying to see what she was gagging on. I asked my husband if he had given her a piece of pickle (he was eating some dill pickles right before this happened and had given some of the kids a piece to try). My first thought was that it was a piece of pickle and she was gagging because she didn't like the sour taste of it. When my husband informed me that he didn't give her a piece of pickle, it finally dawned on me that she had put one of the food coloring tablets in her mouth thinking it was candy.

At this point the inside of her mouth was a bright orange color and she was almost foaming in her mouth (my husband wondered later if it "fizzed" when she put it in). I was able to get the tablet out of her mouth (she hadn't eaten the whole thing) and then my husband grabbed the sprayer at the sink and started spraying inside her mouth to try and wash it out. Needless to say she didn't like that and I think she was wondering what we were doing to her. After we were able to flush a good portion of it out, I took her upstairs and grabbed her toothbrush to try and get some more of it out of her mouth and off her teeth. When I went upstairs my husband grabbed the egg coloring box and read that the tablets are non-toxic (thank goodness!). When I was finished with Kitty upstairs and carried her back down to the kitchen, Kitty informed me that the tablets were "yucky". She kept saying, "Eww, it's gross!" We were then able to finish our decorating with no more problems. Hopefully she has learned her lesson (and I have too).

To all you fellow parents out there with precocious 1 or 2 year olds, beware. The tablets sure do look a lot like candy. They're the perfect size to just pop in your mouth and they come in a variety of pretty colors...

Amazingly, the dye that was all down her shirt came out and there were no stains on her clothes (I was quite surprised especially considering how concentrated those tablets are). Needless to say, we didn't have any orange eggs this year...