Thursday, July 06, 2006

Parenting 101 v8 - parking lot panic

When I am confronted with a difficult parenting situation, I'll put the issue out there to plumb the depths of the vast parenting knowledge of my beloved readers....Here is our eighth edition of Parenting 101.
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Hayley here with todays Parenting 101! Yesterday I was at the grocery store, on my way back to the van with a full cart - Sylas in the front, Olivia in her infant car seat balanced on the back, and a weeks worth of groceries wedged in between the two. Upon reaching the van, I picked up Sylas to throw him in his seat when I noticed Olivia was gagging on someting- she has a bit of a cold so i thought maybe it was just that. Then I remembered that I hadn't unlocked the van yet so with Sylas in one hand, I'm fumbling in my bag with the other to locate the keys. Olivia was still making gagging noises so i gave up looking for the keys and turned my attention to her. She was choking on something- but what? I hadn't seen her put anything into her mouth. So I made a decision to put Sylas down (in the parking lot next to the van) and start fishing arround in Olivia's mouth. She had pulled a peice of plastic off a grocery bag and it was stuck in her throat!! At that point, Sylas took one look at me and ran in the other direction across the parking lot!! The decision I was faced with was: A) help 7 month old daughter who is choking on a plastic bag or B) chace 2 1/2 year old son who is running into parking lot traffic.

What would you do?

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