So, How CAN you tell if a toddler is drunk?

This morning I was doing the dishes in the kitchen while Blain was busy working in the backyard trying to replace our rotted, old deck before the snow flies.  The kids were upstairs in our bedroom watching the newest episode of their new favorite show, Dino Dan, when I saw Carley walking downstairs with a little white bottle in her hand.

I immediately recognized the bottle as being ear drops for clearing water clogged ears that we had in one of our master bathroom draws.  I ran up to her and grabbed the bottle which was now empty.  It had been about half full.  I could smell rubbing alcohol on her.  I started to panic and yelled to Blain and he came running in.  He thought he could smell the alcohol on her breath.  Great, time to call Poison Control.  We've had to do that once before when Lindsey ate some Bag Balm (yes, Bag Balm!) when she was about the same age as Carley is now. 

The ear drops were 95% rubbing alcohol with some glycerin as we found out by reading the label of the bottle to Poison Control.  The woman on the phone took all our information then said to watch out for signs of "intoxication" in the next hour.  She said, "You know how an adult looks drunk, so look for those type of behaviors."

So I spent the next hour watching Carley, REALLY watching.  In that hour, she laughed hysterically, cried uncontrollably, shrieked, babbled, demanded, had a fit when she didn't get her way, tried to use the remote like a cell phone, ran around in circles, and in general showed low impulse control and huge swings in emotions.  In other words, she was her usual 22 month old self.

I guess I just never realized that when an adult has too much to drink, they revert back to toddler type behavior.  On a serious note, thank God she apparently didn't really ingest any rubbing alcohol.  Her hands smelled pretty strong from the alcohol but her breath didn't.  I think all she did was probably take a taste of it from her hands.

I'm usually so, so careful to keep our bathroom door closed.  We even have a child proof door knob to keep Carley out of the bathroom.  She apparently noticed the one time I forgot and left the door open
and decided to check it out.  Thank God for Poison Control and thank God nothing more serious happened.