One morning Aunty Renee rang and asked for a yummy salad recipe as she was going out that night for dinner with a family in the ward. I emailed one to her and told her not to bother buying mustard powder because it's not the kind of thing you use very often and I already had a whole new container. I put it on the corner of the bench so I wouldn't forget to put it in the car when we went out.
After that I put Ella in bed for her morning nap, set Faith up with a DVD (movie as she calls them), and proceeded to start working on the RS newsletter on the computer. After quite a while I turned around to see what Faith was doing as she was extremely quiet and hadn't been talking to me (or interrupting me). I was not impressed to see that she'd picked up the mustard container and tipped out the powder onto the floor and was squishing it into the carpet with her feet. My intial reaction was anger and frustration. How annoying to have to clean this up. Then I thought I better take a photo as evidence of her antics to show her Dad when he got home from work. Just after I took the photos below, she wiped her nose. I saw her hand going to her nose in slow motion and was yelling at her not to do it but she didn't stop. She realised it was hot as soon as it got on her face, and then despite me telling her to keep her hands away from her face (as they were caked with with fine yellow powder), she then went from wiping her nose, to wiping her eyes. That's when the hysterical screaming started. The powder was burning her eyes and we couldn't stop it. I carried her to the bathroom and poured water all over her face but the tears kept coming. She was in such pain that she was trying to scratch her eyes out of their sockets (sorry about the vivid description), plus she was so worked up that she started hyperventilating. There seemed to be no relief, so I ended up calling for an ambulance, fearing that the powder was actually burning her eyeballs. They came over and checked her out and thankfully said that I'd done the right thing. Nothing more could be done apart from flushing her eyes with water. She had a couple of burn marks on her face for a few days where little patches of mustard powder had stayed on her skin. It was horrible, but could have been worse.
Needless to say she is now very hesitant of mustard. I showed her the container the other day and she said 'no mummy, it hurts my eyes.... i need ambilance'
I wouldn't leave medications or cleaning things around in case my girls got into them, but I didn't realise that mustard powder was just as dangerous. Now I'm definitely more vigilant.
