My first 911 call...

So this is the Mickey Mouse 75th Anniversary Collector's Edition of Monopoly (a cute gift to Kyle and me because my mom told me never to settle for anyone who wasn't as good as Mickey, and Kyle, of course, passed the test and wrote a story about Mickey and Minnie and read it to me as part of proposing... )



Anyway, this is the game.

And instead of a hat, a shoe, a thimble, an iron, and a wheelbarrow as the little pieces, this edition has

Minnie Mouse, Mickey Mouse, Pluto, Goofy, Donald Duck, and...

...and Daisy Duck.

You see her in there? Yep, that's not a sticker, folks. That's Daisy Duck. Sitting inside my son's belly.

What a day.

So Ethan and I decided to play Monopoly for the first time ever during Jake's nap this afternoon. We of course modified all kinds of rules but Ethan was able to roll dice, count dice, move spaces, count money, and go to jail. He even grasped the concept of the get out of jail free card and couldn't wait to land on the policeman again so he could go to jail and get out right away. It was a lot more fun than I even thought it would be.

Once Jake woke up, I told Ethan I was very worried about all of the little pieces and my mother radar started to freak out about little houses, dice, and silver figures getting stuck in a little throat. So, we cleaned up most of the game and Ethan said he wanted to play for just a little bit longer on his own. I said that was fine, and decided to just hold Jake in my arms until Ethan had a few more minutes to let the characters talk to each other and march around the board. Two of my original plans for the afternoon had fallen through, and I was just sitting wondering to myself, "hmmm, I wonder what we're going to do tonight..."

Suddenly Ethan came over to the couch with his eyes WIDE open and started gagging. I started patting him on the back, and tried to figure out what was going on. Ethan choked for several seconds, with a look of complete horror on his face, and then screamed as the object went down, down, down, his esophagus.

My memory is a little bit hazy since there was so much adrenaline, but I know I called 911, and by the time the ambulance came Ethan was breathing fine but was really scared. I filled in a few pieces of the story by asking some questions, which he tried very hard to answer while he was crying and shaking.

"Did you swallow it?"

"Yeah."

"Was it one of the pieces?"

"Yeah... I don't know if it was Mickey or Donald."

"Why did you put it in your mouth, Bud?"

"I dropped it."

"Were you holding it up high?"

"Yeah, I was holding it up here and it fell."

So from what I can tell, he was lying on the ground on his side, zooming the pieces up in the air having them fly around and talk to each other, and all of the sudden, Daisy Duck went from his fingers straight into his throat. Poor kid! When he actually swallowed it he was so mad--he was shaking his head and stomping his feet and saying NOOOOOOO!!!

Anyway, the paramedics came and checked him out, and by then things looked pretty much okay, but they asked me if I would like him to be seen at a hospital to take an x-ray. He said sometimes, if objects are sharp they can cause tearing in the intestines, or there are a few other risks. I really hate to cry wolf as far as hopital visits go, so I called Kyle to see his opinion and he said that in the dental clinic at school, if anyone ever swallows a crown or anything like that, you always do an x-ray just to be safe. So, a friend came and grabbed Jake, and Ethan and I rode on an ambulance to the hospital. By then he was totally calm and I felt a little bit guilty as he looked around and started talking about how cool everything inside the ambulance was. Be it known that for Christmas this year Ethan got a play firehouse with a firetruck and firefighters and he has two different firetruck movies that he can quote almost word for word. So, a ride in an ambulance could practically have been a birthday present. James, the paramedic/firefighter who was taking care of us was showing Ethan all of his cool stuff and asking Ethan if he wanted to be a firefighter when he grew up, etc. I almost wanted to say, "Hey, let's not make this too fun! I don't need him to stat swallowing things on purpose to get a cool ride in an ambulance!" But at the same time I was grateful that he was helping Ethan not be scared and have a good time.

Anyway, the rest of the story is fairly uneventful, other than the incredibly supercool x-ray we got that shows Daisy Duck, clearer than even the bones themselves, sitting right there in his tummy. Here it is again:

So, everyone is okay. Unless Ethan suddenly starts to have bad stomach pain or vomiting, things will run their course and the doctor said after we fish it out of the toilet we can clean it off and put it back in the game. Hmmmmmm..... or in the baby book, he said. :)

And to think, I was so worried about Jake. That's life for ya, huh?

Well, we're counting our blessings...