Little Miss Sunshine is teething (evidence: swollen gums, reddened cheeks, loss of appetite, and hella cranky). She’s 17 months old now and STILL only has the middle two bottom teeth, so really, it’s about time she got some more. Yesterday after many, many hours of constant fussing we finally broke down and gave her some Tempra. It was absolutely the right decision as she magically morphed into a sweet-tempered, charming little baby who was able to pack away almost two whole slices of pizza.

It was the last dose of Tempra in the bottle, but we had a new one on hand so I wasn’t worried. When she woke up crying at 1 a.m., I decided I should go and break open the new bottle of Tempra before going in to comfort her, just in case I decided she needed more medicine to settle down.

Fifteen minutes later, the Little Miss had settled herself back down…but I was still fighting with the childproof cap!

I usually find childproof caps to be annoying and sometimes frustrating, but this one was unbelievable — like trying to crack into Fort Knox. It took me more than enough time just to pull off the plastic shrink-wrap around the top of the bottle — I had to use my teeth in the end. Then it took FOREVER to work out the little push-down-turn-clockwise thingy. Even after the Little Miss stopped crying and went back to sleep, I refused to give up. There was no way that little bottle was going to beat me!

I almost went and woke up Sir Monkeypants to open it for me. In the end, though, one last ditch try worked — I covered the top with a towel (the little words and picture printed helpfully on top had almost ripped my palm to shreds) and put the bottle on the floor, then threw my whole weight on it…and finally, it turned.

The irony is that I immediately replaced the child proof cap with the screw-on dropper that it comes with, and threw the other cap away. There’s no way I could go through such a battle every time I need to give my screaming, sick child some medicine, and besides, I’d lose the dropper if it wasn’t with the medicine bottle.

So now it’s totally not child-safe at all.

But at least I can get it open!