What I will remember about today

I had a lovely day. I went to Jen's house for coffee with BFWW and Kary and an assortment of children (who actually all played really well together). I had a starbucks waiting for me when I walked in, we chatted, we had lunch, we chatted, we sat at the table for a solid 5 hours while the assortment of children demolished Jen's beautiful house. She said she didn't care - I decided to believe her.

We had a great time and it was worth all of my time in the car (1:15 there, 1:45 back). Of course, any amount of time is worth seeing BFWW:)

But here is what I will remember for the rest of my life about today:

We left the house around 3:15 - three tired little girls and me. BFWW gave Nora and Ryann a little snack bag of pretzels for the drive home, I got the three settled in to their car seats, thought about going back into the house to use the bathroom, decided I could wait until I got home and we were off.

We're cruising down Cline Ave, about 10 minutes into the drive and I hear gagging in the back seat. I adjust my rearview mirror to see Ryann - she's gagging. I ask her if she's okay. She's gagging. I again ask if she's okay. She's gagging. She's turning red. I ask her to say her name. She's gagging. She's now turning blue. I pull off to the side of the road, throw on my flashers, get out of the car open her car door, do the finger sweep in her mouth, she's even more blue. My fingers could not move fast enough to get her unbuckled and out of that seat. The whole time my car is blocking half of one lane of the two lane road, cars are whizzing by me. The back door is wide open - I'm certain someone is going to take the door off of the car as I'm trying to get Ryann to breathe. I have her out of the car, hitting her on the back, doing the finger sweep - her mouth is clear, she's blue. I'm just about to turn her over to do the heimlich and she sucks in a tiny amount of air. I keep hitting. She's still not breathing. I keep hitting. She's finally breathing. I ask her to say her name and she cries, "noooo". She's pink again. We're both totally shaken up, but I'm still pretty calm. Calm enough to assure the teenager who stopped to see if we were okay, that we were in fact okay. Calm enough to buckle her back in, get in my seat, pull into my lane (which by now was backed up with about 10 cars behind me) and continue on my way like it was no big deal - all in a days work as a mom.

I called Dave and lost it on the phone. Still a little shaken.