I'll be back to fill you on on this one. It'll take to long on the phone keyboard!
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This was not my favorite day. For the sole purposes of torturing, blackmailing and embarrassing my teenaged daughter, I am sitting here this evening to put down the events of this day.
Background information:
1. I work on two mornings a week. I drop the children off at a sitter's house (my girlfriend) and go to work. These mornings are busy with me trying to get my two kids out the door while trying to keep my work attire neat and clean.
2. Before Amelia turned 2, we were under instruction to give her 1/2 of a children's chewable vitamin tablet each day. Luckily, they are easily broken in half.
3. After she turned 2, there were still several half pieces floating around in the vitamin bottle.
4. I am cheap. I like to use things up and not have them go to waste.
The story:
I was running around on this particular morning trying to get all three of us ready and out the door on time. It seems like no matter how much legwork I do the day before (put out clothes, pack lunches, pack work bag, pack diaper bag, set out breakfast items, etc) I am always frantically running in the morning.
I finished eating and went to get dressed. The kids usually linger over their breakfast (or, dawdle if you prefer). They laugh, chat and play with their food. Instead of standing over them yelling, I find it more peaceful to get myself ready for the day. I usually brush my teeth and then check on their progress, go back and pull on my clothes and check on them again. I bounce back and forth between kitchen and bedroom until they are done and I can wipe down both kitchen and kids. With all the bouncing, is it any wonder I forget something almost every day (deodorant, makeup on my left eye, socks, etc).
On one of my "check back" trips, I wiped down William. Amelia was still eating and I half noticed that she had something red smeared all over her face. I figured she was doing one of her newer tricks: dipping her vitamin into her milk and the using it to "paint" her face. On a morning like this my reaction: whatever. I just calculated in an extra minute to wipe her back off again.
It was time to wipe her off just moments later. The job required more than one pass of my washcloth*. I rinsed the cloth and came back to wipe her off again when I noticed more red on her face. If I would have stopped and thought about it, I would have figured out what was going on right then. But, I didn't. Instead, I plunked her down to play and started removing the pieces of concrete like oatmeal from the kitchen table, floor and chair.
A short time later, I found Amelia playing in the living room with more red on her face. At first I thought she was bleeding from her nose. Alarm bells were ringing loudly. The nose was most definitely the source of the red........only it wasn't blood. I was relieved for about .45685468 seconds. That is when I realized something was wrong. So very wrong. I tipped Amelia back against her wishes (ie: I held her down) and took a peek up her nose with a flashlight to discover the source of red: a children's vitamin was lodged up inside.
PANIC.....PANIC.......PANIC...........PANIC.............PANIC................PANIC...........PANIC....
I don't work at the sort of job where I can arrive late. There is no substitute teacher finding system to call. I am responsible for finding a replacement if I cannot be there to teach my students promptly at 9am. Life happens, but I CANNOT be late. This situation is difficult because it is too late to find a replacement and I have to make some hard choices.
PANIC.....PANIC.......PANIC...........PANIC.............PANIC................PANIC...........PANIC....
The doctor's office was not open until 9 (remember what time work starts?), so I had to call the after hours call service. The nurse was very helpful and reassured me this was not something to panic about unless she couldn't breathe. They advised me to keep watch over her and make an appointment when the office opened.
Conclusion: I'll wrap this up as quick as I can. I rushed around on PANIC while red stuff continued to leak from Amelia's nose. I would do a task, then run by and wipe her nose. I called John, got ready for work, called the sitter and got the kids ready.
Moments before I had to leave for work, Amelia sneezed two of the biggest, reddest sneezes ever. A flashlight** inspection showed no traces of the vitamin. I dropped the kids off at the sitter's house on time. I arrived to work on time, exhausted.
John took Amelia to the doctor to confirm all the vitamin was gone AND there hadn't been any damage to her cute little nose.
*In hindsight, I now realize she had been half crying/complaining about something while rubbing her nose. My busy schedule oriented brain did not have room for this information at the time.
**Yes. I am the kind of mom who will inspect your nose with a flashlight without thinking twice. I am NOT the kind of mom who will pinch the opposite nostril shut and blow out the object as initially suggested by the nurse.
