Baby proofing your house when you have three little boys is pert near impossible. They have their Lego's, marbles, crayons, Erector set wheels, screws, bolts, and then there's the bonus food on the floor-the corner of a Doritos, a couple raisins, and possibly something once resembling a french fry that probably fell out of someones pocket from the car ride home from Billings. Other than that...oh yeah...it's perfectly safe. My daughter is 21 months old and has been pretty good about not putting things in her mouth. She'll pop a couple Lego's in, but she shakes her head and says "uck". Great...we're learning.
One evening she came to me shaking her head "uck" but she had two marbles in her mouth. Marbles make me pretty nervous, so before I could even say anything my face must have reflected my anxiety because she plopped them out. But then I heard a funny 'thunk' noise. The kind you hear when you hit your front teeth hit against a real glass-glass. She started laughing in her mischievous laugh. And she started swallowing hard. Uh-oh! I think a marble went down the hatch. I texted a good friend and thankfully she's really level headed, and shared with me what she'd googled. I thought it would be fine because she seemed fine, and was drinking a bunch of water. But you just never know if it was ER worthy.
My third son did about the same thing, except it was a penny and he was four. You'd think four is old enough to know not to put a penny in your mouth-apparently not. He did actually choke. I had to flip him upside down and whack his back. When went to the doctor to make sure it was in his stomach, and the x-rays showed...sure enough. A penny was growing in this tummy. I also had the doc check his back bones in the x-ray too since I whacked him so hard trying to get the silly penny dislodged I was afraid I broke something, but it was fine. I'm not sure how or when that trusty copper penny removed itself, but when we went back for a follow up x-ray it was gone.
This time hopefully we'll 'pass' the time and marble, and see how this comes out in the end...the real 'end'.