5 days

Candy is bad...

especially if you inhale it.

Just ask Theodore.

A long night, a scary ER trip and a scarier few days in the hospital...

it was a horrible way to spend 5 days, but kids are amazing.

Both our kids have been chokers.

We are pros at the Heimlich and big back slaps at our house.

They like to laugh, scream and cry - all the while shoveling food by the fistfulls in their mouths.

Dang little multitaskers.

This time the candy corn sat up shop down deep.

The big back slap wasn't quite enough.

A few hours later a cough started, then Theodore woke up struggling and grunting to breath.

Turns out the lungs just don't work as well with melted sugar and corn syrup gunking up things.

Breathing treatments, oxygen, IV's, more machines, a scope and lung wash-down, 

ventilator, antibiotics, sedatives and steroids....

Theodore, you were a little fighter.

You kicked, tried to bite and pinched the nurses in the ER.

You came out of your sedatives unexpectedly and ripped out one of your IVs.

I was getting lunch, but your daddy looked like a victim from a slasher movie when I came back.

There was also a lot of worrying, pacing, fretting, coffee, more coffee...

chairs that turn into "beds", cafeteria food and nights spent counting each breath.

I think I gained a few wrinkles and a few hundred gray hairs.

Watching one of your babies fight to breath and then knowing the other one is away missing you...

it hard on the heart.

Seeing them bounce right back.

Waking up in the morning to find you climbing your crib/cage walls.

ripping off oxygen sensors, and pulling the emergency nurse cord...

Those Theodore will do the heart some good but not those gray hairs.

You are NEVER EVER allowed to do something like this again.

Capiche?