Who's got the Button?

Don't worry.  No scripture, philosophy or social conscience today.  (Hey, I just figured out that conscience is spelled con-science.  I've never been able to reliably spell that word.  Now I have to take a minute to consider the idea that conscience = con-science, as if the two are somehow opposites.)

Last Saturday, while making a futile search for Guaraná in the Chicago area, the whole family was driving around in the car.  As parents know, once you've strapped your kids into their car seats, a few strange physiological changes are likely to happen.  Horrible fighting is a common one, but on this day the girls were manifesting another common strapped-in symptom: butter fingers.  Whatever they're playing with ends up on the floor every minute or two, followed by wails of "Oh no! Mom! I dropped my puppy!"  Of course, it is urgent that they get it right back, so they can drop it on the floor again in a minute or two.  Somehow, they can sleep all night without ever letting a toy escape from their clutches, but 3 minutes awake in a car seat is too much to ask.  So they wail in the back seat, while we try to explain to the, for the 14th time that day, that we don't have super elastic limbs that can reach into every nook and cranny of the back seat to retrieve lost toys.  Also, we can't even see what we're trying to reach.

So, as we're driving through strange parts of town (in strange places with strange names like Streamwood and Schaumburg) Ella has once again dropped whatever the toy of the day was.  To stop the whining in the back seat, Shannon gropes helplessly on the floor looking for the beloved possession, and in her search comes across something else that might keep the tyke happy: a button.  I never saw the button (foreshadowing), but it was described to me as plastic, very smooth, and perhaps slightly larger than a dime.

A few minutes later, we had a different wail from the back seat.  "My button! It went down my swoat!"  At first, we thought she had dropped her button down her coat, but clearly, such an event does not get a whole blog post of it's own.  Nope.  She swallowed it.  We've never had huge problems with either of our girls putting things in their mouths (well, other than Ella biting Julia on occasion), and they've certainly never eaten any non-foodstuffs before.  So there we are, in a car, wondering what to do, imagining intestinal blockages and scolding Ella for putting things in her mouth that aren't food.  Ella meanwhile is very sad that she can't have her button back.

Once we got home, made a few phone calls (Grandma and the Dr's office), checked out webMD, and of course, consulted with the many experts that are always there to offer advice on Facebook, we determined that there was nothing to do but wait it out.  We explained to Ella that the button went in one end, and would just have to come out the other.  This also means that her parents (mostly her mom) got the delightful job of searching for the offending button.

On Tuesday it finally came out.  Ella was, of course, thrilled.  Now she could have her button back!  Sorry kid, once it's been where the sun don't shine, it's never going to see the light of day again.  Flush.