Never A Dull Moment...

If our life was a movie and the movie had a title, one option would surely be: "Never A Dull Moment," (starring the Hutchinsons). What it lacks in creativity, it makes up in truth. Since having kids, I simply cannot remember a time in the recent and/or distant past in which we've had "a dull moment."

This weekend was exemplary proof of just that. It actually started in a most fantastic way -- in an unsual way, to boot. I woke up with an immediate realization. The sun was out. It was Saturday, and the Sun. Was. Out. It was bright and orangey and happy... Do you know the song "Zippitee Doo Da?" When you live in Washington and you've endured months and months of perpetual rain... rain well into the month of June, even... In these circumstances, when you see the sun shining in a clear cornflower blue sky, you may want to sing "Zippitee Doo Da." I for one, did.

I opened the kitchen windows and made the girls breakfast. I brewed coffee and looked at the blue sky. It was magnificent. I told John I wanted to take a run by the lake, and that's just what I did. Everything seemed to glisten in the morning sun. I came back home in a better mood than when I left - endorphins fizzing and popping in my brain. We made plans for the day... First, a trip to the park to enjoy the beautiful day outside with the girls. Then home for Brooklyn's nap, and John's yardwork. When Brookie woke up, we'd go have dinner together and see an evening movie (Shrek).

I trotted upstairs to shower and get ready. Brookie, of course, followed. This child likes to be exactly where I am, exactly all the time. It doesn't matter if I am showering, going to the bathroom, cooking a 5 course meal (okay, this rarely happens) or vacuuming the stairs... She wants to be within arm's distance. The only exception (and pardon me for the tmi) is when she needs to, er... poop. This is the only time she will look at me frankly and say, "I NEED some privacy, Mom..." At which point I say, "OKAY!" and try and get something done in the 10 or 15 minutes of privacy she allots herself to poop. I will admit (perhaps a little guiltily) that I actually look forward to when she has to go, because I get a little respite of my own... A sad but true fact. Oh, the other thing... though she is potty trained in the sense that she knows when she has to go, she prefers to go in a pull-up. More tmi, but this is all critical to the story... so forgive me for dwelling, but you'll understand in a minute.

So into the shower I went, while Brooklyn stood on the other side of glass busying herself as she often does by pulling out hundreds of Q-tips, opening and closing all the drawers and cabinets, twirling toilet paper around her waist, climbing on the toilet seat, and turning the water faucet on and off -- all to the continuous sound of my loud (yet helpless) pleas from behind the steamy shower door, "Brookie! Don't Touch! No. Put that back. No more toilet paper. Stop flushing. That's DADDY's deodorant. Stop using Mommy's toothbrush, etc...!!!" So, when Brooklyn told me she "had to poop" when I exited the shower, it was with some degree of relief that I took her to her room and got her situated in a pull-up. Still dripping wet and in a robe, I began to leave her to do her business in her room. "Close the door." Brooklyn told (not asked) me. I gladly did and when the door was shut, I hightailed it back to my bathroom to get dry and dressed.

When I had some clothes on and my hair was semi-dry, I went to check on Brooklyn's progress. I opened her bedroom door to find the room empty. I almost turned and left, but heard something from behind the closet door. I opened it to discover Brooklyn in her poopy pull-up having a private tea party with the bottle of Children's Tylenol I had, just the night before, put high on her 5 foot high dresser. I think I gasped, or screamed, or did something completely unexpected because Brooklyn froze in place and looked at me with terrified saucer eyes. I grabbed the bottle from her, which was now completely empty, and tried to remember how much Tylenol was in there before Brooklyn helped herself to it. To my recollection, it had been nearly full. This is when the full-fledge panic hit. When I hit full-fledge panic mode, I get very, very calm. But before the calm came, I did manage to say to Brooklyn with all the fear and anger of a Mother who has seen her child do something extremely dangerous, "Nooooooo!!! NOOOOOO!!!" And with that I hoisted her stinky (and now crying) little self on my hip and ran downstairs to call poison control.

"Zippitee Doo Da" was officially off the playlist.

I told John what was going on and he immediately got on the phone with the Emergency Room close to home, but not before he did his own scared Daddy version of the, "Noooo!Noooo!" Brookie was bawling in earnest now, the full magnitude of her naughtiness weighing on her. While John was talking to the ER folks, I was on the phone with Poison Control. The woman on the phone, Debbie, who had a very calm way about her (which I was thankful for) told me there was nothing the ER could do for Brooklyn until it had been 4 hours since she injested the medicine. Apparently it takes that long for it to affect the liver -- which is what would suffer if she had a toxic amount of acetaminophen in her system. Liver failure snagged in my brain and rolled around while I tried to process what she was saying. Toxic. Liver shutting down... I was terrified. But Debbie said to keep her home for 4 hours. "The ER people will just twiddle their thumbs for 4 hours if you bring her there," Debbie told me. She encouraged me to get Brooklyn to eat and drink. I made a turkey and cheese sandwich and cut it into tiny squares and put one of the squares in Brooklyn's hand. She was flushed from crying and when I sat down on the couch with her she melted into my chest and wadded the sandwich into her fist. So much for the eating part. "Eat your little sandwich, Love..." I asked Brooklyn as gently as I could. She looked at it and whimpered. Both John and I sat watching her like a pot about to boil. Was she acting lethargic? Was that normal? Was she about to have a reaction? What would we do if she did? Was she too flushed? Hot? Ultimately, we decided we'd rather have her in the ER, regardless if there was to be some finger twiddling. We decided I would take Brooklyn (who was still clutching her mini-sandwich) while John stayed home with the older girls. Why take a family of 5 to the ER? we figured.

Around this time, Brooklyn got it. She heard the word: Doctor, and: Hospital... at which point the shrieking began. Let's make one thing abundantly clear... Brooklyn is horribly. terribly. freakishly. afraid of the Doctor. This, I believe, is a result of her early months when each and every time she'd visit her Doctor she'd be stuck with multiple needles, then subsequently feel awful for days. Saying "let's go to the Doctor," to her, would be much like saying "let's go swim with some Great White Sharks," to an adult. So she cried. Loudly. The entire drive to the ER (20 minutes) and the entire check in process, and the entire time we sat in the little room while the nurses took her vitals. The nurses asked me questions, which I only somewhat heard. I managed to yell over the cries what had happened in Brooklyn's closet with the Tylenol bottle. They entered some information in the computer and yelled back that the Doctor would be in "soon." I held Brooklyn close on the hospital bed. I told her she was safe and that everything would be okay. Her face and ears were bright red from crying. I continued to reassure her that I was 'there' and she was safe. Finally, she sighed... and the crying stopped - just as my head was about to implode.

An hour later the Doctor arrived - a Mister Rogers type who smiled and cracked jokes and kept calling me "Mom." He said there was nothing they could do until 4 hours had passed. He suggested we go home. I made him assure me twenty times that nothing would happen if we left the ER. He assured me. He told me when we returned they would need to do a blood draw to test for Toxic levels (that damn word again) of Acetaminophen in Brooklyn's system. If there was an issue, they would give her an antidote, which he said, was very effective. We drove home, in the golden light of the first sunny day in what seemed like eons. Brooklyn was exhausted. I was exhausted. I got her to eat, and then we needed to go back. For the blood draw.

If you think I was nervous about Brooklyn having blood drawn from her tiny little arm, then you're absolutely right. My stomach hurt. I was shaky and overly cheery. I told Brooklyn we were going to see Shrek after we were done far too many times. We checked back in at the ER and two nurses took us back to another room. This time Brooklyn wasn't crying. Thank God. One nurse was going to insert the needle, and the other was there to hold my baby down. I did a great deal of breathing in, but not nearly enough breathing out. Brookie looked so little on that hospital bed while the nurse checked her arms for suitable veins. It was time and just before the needle went in I said, "Brookie!!!" and she looked directly at me. "What?" she asked. "Do you want to see Shrek!?" The needle was in, and dark blood was filling the vial. She started to look at it, and I said, "BROOKIE!!!" and she said, "What?" Before I could answer, we were done. The nurse was putting a bandaid on her arm. "We're Done!" I told her. "You were so brave." No tears, and she looked at the bandaid proudly. "I'm gonna show Peyton and Quinny." She told me.

We had to wait for over an hour for the blood results. I let Brooklyn play with my iPhone, and she must have taken 100 pictures of the floor and my hands while I watched whatever Cartoon Disney show the nurses put on the television.

The Doctor arrived again, all smiles and cheesy humor, to reveal that Brooklyn was completely Toxic Free. He had numbers and a graph, both which revealed that my trouble making little angel was indeed, okay to go home. I told Brooklyn the news, "We're done!" She perked up and told me, "We can go home now!"