Putting All That Training to Good Use

Sammy took 20 years off my life tonight at dinner by scaring me to death.

We had some left over baby carrots from a veggie tray we had at his party yesterday, so I fed them to the kids at dinner tonight. Sammy was goofing around in his chair at the same time he had a mouthful of carrots, and fell over backwards onto the floor. He hit his head on the floor when he landed, which caused him to inhale in surprise and pain, which meant that he breathed in a mouthful of hard chunky carrots. And then-my worst nightmare (or one of them-the other being a fire in the middle of the night) came true. He started choking.

There is nothing worse than looking at your child's face when they can't breathe. When they are scared spitless.

I am praising God right now that I have had to sit through countless First Aid and CPR trainings for various daycare and teaching positions I have held. Somehow adrenaline and training took over, and I grabbed him, flipped him upside down in the football hold, and started pounding on his back. In a few seconds, even though it seemed like HOURS, the carrot came back out. He coughed and coughed and coughed for a long time after that, and a lot more came out.

I was SO relieved I started crying, and I went to sit down on the chair I thought was behind me so I could turn him around and reassure myself that he was fine. Somehow in all the excitement though I moved the chair, and I ended up falling with Sammy to the ground, flat on my back, and hitting my head REALLY hard on the edge of the kitchen chair on the way down.

What a night.

Poor Sammy. For the rest of the night he kept saying, "What happened?! I upside down! Mommy hit me!" He was so confused!

No one in this house is ever going to eat a fresh carrot again. It's a new rule. You can add carrots to my list of things I'm scared of.