Minnesotans...they're everywhere!

When I wrote my last blog, I had no idea it was interlinked with Jimmy's kissing extravaganza--I am just sad I wasn't at church Sunday to experience all the love.

On an entirely different note from kissing, but one that still involves the mouth area, my daughter Eva almost choked to death on a bead on Sunday morning. Now, maybe it wasn't choking "to death", but to a scared mother, that is exactly what it seemed like.

I was driving Eva to church alone because Dan took the other kids earlier for a kid-festival thing. I STUPIDLY let Eva hold one of my beaded bracelets in the back seat, thinking to myself that surely an 11 month old child can't rip apart a bracelet...as I am stopped at a light, I hear her choking/gagging in the back seat and I instantly knew what was happening, "Ohmigod she got the beads." I reached back and fished one out of her throat, and I took the ones out of her hands, and then reached my finger down her throat (later the paramedics told me that was a no-no, but what was I going to do?) to clear it. I then put the car in park, ran outside, screamed "HELP ME!" and the people behind me got out to help.

At this point, Eva is crying/choking pretty hard, but there was no bead in her mouth/throat, so she was just residually choking. The people behind me called 911 and the paramedics came and looked her over, but said we should go the the ER in case the bead was lodged in her throat. At this point, I was crying from the adrenaline, the fear, and the fact I was certain I deserved the "STUPIDEST MOTHER OF THE YEAR" award. At the ER, she was X-rayed, and they couldn't see the bead, but the doctor said that it was small enough to pass in her poop if she had swallowed it--although the bead was probably 3/4-1 inch in circumference. Thank God Eva was and is okay, but the fear of losing her, the terror I felt when I heard her gasping in the back seat and feeling so frightened that I wouldn't be able to save her was one of my most emotionally exhausting moments as a mother.

Speaking of mothers, the story gets more interesting. If you were my mother, and you drove by 2 police cars, an ambulance, and your daughter's blue minivan with her BUSH/CHENEY '04 sticker on the back, would you stop? Even if you're a Democrat, I still ask you, would you stop?

My Mom was on her way to work when she passed the scene of our family drama, and she went on ahead to work and then called the police to ask them what happened. HUH?

I asked her when she got home that night why she didn't stop--for all she knew, I may have been breathing my last breath--and her response was, "I was in the far right lane, so I couldn't turn around, and I couldn't tell for SURE if it was your van." O-kay.

At least the people who were behind our van when I frantically ran out to help Eva had a parting message that was too good to be true. They saw my license plates and as we walked off towards the ambulance, yelled out after us, "It will all be okay. We're from Minnesota, too!"