Baby Book Moment #1 of Many (I'm sure)

Had a babybook moment the other day with my sweet baby girl. A babybook moment is one of those "incidents" you just have to write down so that years from now when Mommy and Daddy are being introduced to so-and-so prom date we can remember (not that we'd forget this one!) when...


Olivia flushed Daddy's entire keychain down the toilet an hour before we to leave for vacation. You read that right...all the keys, the keyless entry, the company car key, the house and mail keys...every last one of them.

Maybe you're wondering how this could possibly happen. But I'm guessing if you're a mom, you can probably more than understand (at least better than my husband when I tried to explain what happened to his keys)! As I said, we were getting ready to go for 10 days at the beach. It's a few hours in the car and a lot of stuff to pack. Everything was all set. My husband just had to load the stuff in the car. My daughter was wearing her crankypants (and I think she had the matching hat on that day, too). Anyway, in an attempt to stop the whining I thought I'd put her in her little push car and take her and the dog for a spin around the block. In my mind, I'm doing this to help give Daddy a little room to work, a few minutes of precious silence before the three hours in the car, a few minutes of solitude before a week surrounded by both our families. Before we left, for our walk, I needed to make a pit stop. I sat Olivia on the floor just outside the bathroom and left the door open so I could watch her from my perch. She immediately started whining. I grabbed Daddy's keys (his, b/c he asked that I grab something out of his car while on my walk) to keep her entertained for the 10 seconds (yes, I pee that fast) I needed to myself. By the time I had finished she'd crawled over to me, keys in hand, pulled herself up on my legs and was now standing. I held her one arm so I could stand up and get my self situated. I quickly turned around to flush and in that very second she leaned her chubby little hand over the toilet bowl and waved "bye-bye" to Daddy's keys. My hand shot into that toilet bowl faster than I'd like to admit, but they were gone. Bye-bye keys. ""%$^&*!!!" Why is it that my husband hadn't been there a minute before to pick her up when she was whining, but now that the keys were sitting square at the bottom of the sewer he was there questioning how in the he** this could have happened. He (and I'm sure most other Dads) wouldn't and couldn't understand, he's never peed with his daughter hanging off his leg.  

Immediately I called my father-in-law who said they couldn't have gone too far and to stick my hand down there further. By now my hand was nearly stuck. Great, that's all I needed. As I'm on the phone with him I think, "maybe a hanger" will work. A minute later he suggests the same thing. I must be onto something if we both thought of it. But five minutes later it's clear that won't work either. My husband then comes down with a magnet. I thought this was pretty good. But we quickly realized that wasn't the answer to our growing problem either. With an hour until we needed to leave we decided we had to call a plumber. "Yes, ma'am we can be there within an hour. It'll be $275." You've got to be kidding me! The only key we really needed was the key to my husband's company car. He finally found a spare and we decided the keys would have to remain in toilet bowl heaven.

We left for our vacation knowing when we get back we've got a different kind of fishing to do.

I hope your July 4th started better than mine.