The Branco's - Counting Our Blessings: July 2008

We have officially survived our first visit to the ER with one of the kids. Thankfully, no one was injured or seriously ill. It was more of a precautionary visit for Sam, who decided he wanted to sample some of the fungal delights in our front lawn. Yes, he ate a mushroom that was growing in our yard. I noticed he had something in his mouth, so I directed him to spit it out. When he opened up, I saw something brown which I assumed was a piece of bark (one of his other favorites!). When I started pulling it out I realized what it was and started yelling for Bryan. We tried to look up the mushrooms online, but it's amazing how many varieties there are and how similar they all look. I saw one that resembled ours and it was labeled "poisonous, especially to small children." I immediately got on the phone with poison control, who recommended we take him to the ER, just in case.

Luckily, we only waited a relatively short time at the ER (45 min.) before they brought us in. They gave Sam, who was acting completely normal, a cup of what can best be described as a charcoal smoothie. It was this thick, black drink that they wanted him to get to work on. He actually took several good drinks of it before deciding he had had enough. We spent the next hour and a half trying everything we could think of to get him to drink more, with little success. Meanwhile, he still is acting like he feels completely fine other than being up way past his bedtime. I did wonder for a few moments whether he was hallucinating because for a while he kept licking the wall and laughing hysterically afterward. I'll just blame it on being up too late. Finally, the doctor let us go with instructions to return if there were any problems. (which there weren't). Needless to say, we were all very happy to get home and get to bed after that ordeal.

In Nate news, he finished his "starfish" swim lessons this week. Does he know how to swim? No, but he will put his face in the water if forced to now. He had a lot of fun, and he is much more comfortable in the water than he was before so we did accomplish something. He has also been going to preschool 2 mornings a week. Except for a few days when he didn't want to stay, he has done really well. He loves his teacher (Miss Elia) and he looks like such a big boy walking into school with his lunch bag. The only thing he doesn't like is walking to the library on Tuesday for story time. He thinks it's too far, and he says he cries at the library because he misses his Mommy when he sees the other Moms there with their kids. Ahhh! He's such a sweetheart. I don't know how we lucked out with these two wonderful boys.

As always, here are a few pictures...