Freaking Out!

The past 24 hours have been rough on Caleb-- but, I would like to argue that they have been more rough for me (he's much tougher than I am).

First, let's start with last evening. We got a new stove thanks to Dave and Anika's landlord (she didn't need it anymore) and considering the stove in our lavish rental had paint on it to cover up the dents, we thought a replacement might just be necessary. So we pulled out the old stove and started to switch it when Pete inhaled a large amount of gas, quickly reattached the pipe and called a plumber to come install the new stove. In between the phone call and the plumber actually showing up, Caleb managed to crawl into the kitchen and explore the new arrangements (envision a stove pulled away from the cabinets, exposing all sorts of dust and junk that we all like to ignore under the appliances). I was chopping vegetables to make chicken noodle soup (see, that is what I get for trying to be domestic!) when I noticed it was quiet and turned around to check on Caleb.

Of course, I found him grasping for all the nasty gunk under the stove and shoving it in his mouth. As I am frantically trying to swipe all of it out of his mouth without vomiting on the poor kid, Pete comes up and says, "Um, there was RAT POISON under there."

I almost dropped Caleb as I flew to the phone to call his doctor. (Meanwhile, Pete is saying, "He's fine, just watch him to make sure he's not lethargic" Thanks hun, that makes me feel so much better.) I am connected to the answering service where they proceed to confirm my fears that I am the worst mother EVER. "What? He ate rat poison? You fed him RAT POISON?!?!" In the background I could hear them, "Uh-huh, that baby is not even a year old..." (thanks, I didn't know that...). Finally they tell me that I'd better rush him to the ER. I hung up and just started to sob. Through the tears I managed to tell Pete we'd better get him to the hospital and I went down to find the number for Poison Control incase there was something we should have done before the trip to the ER.

Luckily, the fabulously wonderful woman from Poison Control was able to understand me and my words in between sobs and she managed to calm me down. She also told me that Caleb would have needed to eat 2 tablespoons of this particular brand of rat poison before it would hurt him. She was so nice and I felt a little bit better after talking to her. She suggested giving Caleb some juice so he could get the taste out of his mouth and told me not to worry about it, everything was going to be OK. Thank heavens for Poison Control. I cried for a while and Pete finally told me I had to snap out of it (I know, he wins the empathy award) but he was right-- everything was OK and there wasn't any need to get into hysterics and scare Caleb.

Fastforward about 20 hours.

We went to a "rally" for Obama this evening. Kate Walsh (Grey's Anatomy; Private Practice) spoke and it was pretty cool. Anika and I braved the crazed fans to get pictures of Charlie and Caleb with Kate. Afterward, Dave and Pete felt it was necessary (Anika and I agreed) to head over to the Naked Chocolate Cafe for a bit of chocolate. After finding the perfect parking spots (it took us a little while, but it happened!) we enjoyed chocolate fondu with strawberries, marshmellows, cookies, bananas, etc, three different fruit smoothies and a "junk-in-the-trunk" bar. The evening was perfect and my sugar high was complete when Caleb fell and smashed his skull into the copper table. The large dent in his forhead quickly bruised and turned into a large lump and everyone in the Cafe stared as I tried to calm my screaming child. We promptly iced his forhead and he calmed down, but he's going to have a large goose egg there for awihile. (Don't worry, I've already googled "internal bleeding in infants" and so far, he doesn't have any of the symptoms.)

Needless to say, I'm a wreck and I've going to wrap my child in bubble wrap and place him a padded cell.

Oh yeah, and we got a parking ticket. Fantastic.