Our First (Psuedo) Emergency

This morning we woke up to the first snow of the season! It was only a dusting, but we bundled up and went outside to explore, braving the nasty slushy steps:

Aidan considered the slide and swings but thought better of it.

He settled for turning on his "light" and just looking.

Made for a fun morning.

And then....

Right before naptime I sat Aidan down at the table and let him play with his light and his trains while I went to the bathroom and got him a new diaper for night-night. I came back to find the light dismantled:

He'd done this before and knew it was a no-no, so I scolded him and took the light away then laid him down to change his diaper. He made a funny face and complained at the obvious injustice of it (and oh man, can he complain! How old is he? I thought this started at 2! haha!), and I thought his expression looked a little like he was concerned about something in his mouth. My brain made the connection pretty quickly and I picked him up and checked his mouth. Nothing in it. I went back to the light - missing a battery. I searched all over the floor and around the table and didn't find anything. Awesome.

I did a quick search on battery ingestion and found enough to scare my pants off so I called the closest urgent care place to make sure they had x-rays and that they take our insurance. Then I had to find a ride. Found one and called Rob and he suggested that I call the battery ingestion hotline out of DC even though we were already taking action. I did and they suggested that we skip urgent care and go straight to the ER in case they found out that the battery was lodged in his esophagus, as this is where the acid of the battery is most likely to do damage and if they found it there he'd have to be admitted anyway.

I prayed that the ER people would be calm, that it would be fairly empty, and that they wouldn't overreact and try to stick any needles in him or give me any reason to be the bad guy - especially without Rob there. Praise God, they were wonderful. Aidan didn't even catch on that there was something scary happening. He said "cheese" as they took his x-rays, and he pleasantly said hello and goodbye to every doctor, nurse, etc. who came into the room. :D We were there for less than half an hour total.

The verdict: no battery anywhere in our little guy! yippee! So, we're $100 less (materially) wealthy but have peace of mind. We just have to watch him for any weird signs of illness. And find that darn battery... :)