This, Too Shall Pass--LITERALLY!

There are so many things I could have titled this post:
A Penny For Your Thoughts, He's a Little Runaway, An Unintended Lesson In Oxidation, Why the Piggy Bank is Now in Exile, The Least-Desired but Most-Anticipated Birthday Gift Ever...I could go on.

Curious yet?

Let's just say I had the most interesting 'end' to my work-week and start to my (birthday) weekend ever. It all started when I was dutifully making dinner and waiting patiently for my loving husband to get home after the end of a longer-than-usual week with the kids. To their credit, at the moment all three kids were playing ever-so-angelically in the family room. Or so I thought, until I heard the office door slam and discovered that my son--our beloved middle child who loves to fly under the radar--had instead been silently making mischief in daddy's off-limits work space. Now, as an almost-three-year-old boy, that mischief could amount to just about anything. (His most recent contribution was some wall-art all over the house--again--thankfully only in pencil. But it still means grinding a few jumbo erasers into stubs to return the wall to its proper color). So I reluctantly plopped the baby in his high chair with some crackers for safety's sake and abandoned the boiling pot of pasta on the stove to run to the office to see what was amiss, imagining all the while things like diploma frames or computers screens that could be lying shattered on the office floor. Blessedly, it took me but a minute to confirm that other than the little American flag my son had stolen from the pencil holder to wave around, there was no damage.

But in that minute (and when I say a minute, I mean less than 60 seconds because I know better than to leave the kids unattended by now), I emerged to find this sight in the family room:

The fact that my oldest was reading her favorite books nicely in the corner while my son stood guiltily by clearly highlighted the culprit. With a sigh of defeated exasperation as I glanced from the dangling curtain rod to the pot of pasta on the stove that was starting to boil over, I swallowed my anger, picked up the little mischief-maker, and marched him up to his room for a time-out behind the kiddie gate (a practice I had to adopt lest I do something much more rash in my seething rage). Then, as any devoted wife and homemaker would, I ran back downstairs, made sure the baby wasn't choking on all the crackers he'd stuffed in his mouth at once, saved the pasta, and left my husband to deal with our little re-decorator and the broken curtain rod when he got home.

A few minutes later I heaved a sigh of relief as I beheld my husband's handsome face and told him how glad I was to see him. (I was also very much looking forward to some quiet time, as he so wonderfully promised to take the kids with him to get my birthday cake from the ice cream store so I could relax!). I filled him in on his super fun to-do list, and he cheerfully said he'd go talk to our son and bring him back downstairs in time for dinner.

But as I dished out dinner, my husband returned with a look on his face that was anything but cheerful. "So, I went to talk to Erik," he said calmly, "and he told me he swallowed a penny from his piggy bank." I about dropped the pot of pasta on my foot. "He WHAT?! Oh. my. goodness." After confirming that our little guy was still acting just fine, we decided that I'd be the one to Google "what do I do, my kid swallowed a penny," omitting the implied, "because I am Mother of the Year," of course.  

Now in case you've never had the pleasure yourself, I'll also let you know how very humbling it is to call your doctor's after-hours cell phone, on a Friday night, knowing that he is at home with his own children, and fully comprehends that you are Mother of the Year. He very kindly told me that unless our son was exhibiting signs of distress or trouble swallowing, the penny was probably already in his stomach and should pass within a few days. Trip to the ER averted, I gratefully hung up the phone, resigned myself to fishing through dirty diapers for a penny for the next week or so, and sat down to dinner with the rest of the family--including Disappearing Penny Man, who was eating most eagerly. I breathed another sigh of relief (I should have known better!) and we decided that we'd make it a family trip to the ice cream store and get some much-needed ice cream stress therapy while picking up my cake.

My loving husband got the kids ready while I chimed in every few minutes to direct our wandering and distracted middle child toward his shoes and the garage. In no time at all, my husband informed me that all the kids were packed up in the car, and I ran upstairs to grab a jacket as I dreamed of all the toppings that might grace my ice cream...marshmallows...pretzels...Reese's...wait a minute, why is the front door open?  The kids were supposed to go through the garage. But I knew that penny boy had also developed a recent fetish with only wanting to use the front door...And the storm door isn't latched, either...oh no. NO! Not the dog! "Samson? Samson!! Samson, come here, boy!!!" I called frantically. But alas, our behemoth white polar bear of a dog was gone. So much for those ice cream toppings.

Sorry, Mom. I didn't mean to.
Well actually I kinda did...

I yelled to my husband, and in a matrix-like exchange he tossed me the keys as I tossed him the leash, and the search party began: my husband on foot, and me with an SUV full of kids a-chatter, excitedly peppering me with question after question about their missing dog. I peeled around the corner toward the main road, praying that the dog had enough sense to go the opposite direction of the four-lane road near our house. As I crawled along the shoulder with all the windows down, calling our dog's name like a maniac, I happened to glance at the clock. And in the middle of all the madness, I couldn't help but laugh piteously at the realization that all of this had happened in less than an hour. Then I sobered up and prayed to God again that our dog wasn't someone's bumper decoration. When the phone rang a moment later I stifled another sigh of relief and whipped the car around as my husband gasped from the other end that he'd spotted the dog peeing on someone's peonies and was running toward him. We turned back into the neighborhood just in time to witness my husband, shirt tail awry, tackling our dog at a full sprint. It was NFL-worthy.

Thankfully, that was the last big addition to the Friday night shenanigans. We did finally make it to the ice cream store after barricading the dog behind locked doors and lecturing our absent-minded penny miser for the fifteenth time about keeping the front door locked and closed. The double chocolate ice cream with Twix bits that I ordered was heavenly. The penny-ingester had no qualms about ingesting copious amounts of ice cream, too. I picked out a delectable-looking ice cream cake for our celebration the next day (since my Sunday birthday was chock full of other commitments on the calendar). Then my husband fixed the broken curtain rod and we hid the piggy banks until the kids turn 18. The next day brought more welcome stress relief. We spent a perfectly lovely and more importantly uneventful Saturday as a family hanging out at the park feeding the ducks; then after cake with the in-laws, my husband and I got to join our friends for a much-needed night out sans kids!

Birthday date night! Sheesh, we needed that!
(Notice the repaired curtain rod!)

No pennies surfaced on Saturday, but as Sunday morning dawned beautiful, bright and sunny--the perfect day for a birthday--a suspicious odor wafted from my son's diaper to my nose. I shuddered to think of the not-so-shiny birthday present that might be awaiting me. Sure enough, as I opened the diaper to behold the stomach-turning contents (you know how copper turns green when exposed to the elements? Apparently the contents of my son's bowels were not exempt from the effects of oxidation, either) there it was--my lucky birthday penny just waiting for me!

Even better? An entire box of disinfecting wipes revealed the icing on the (proverbial birthday) cake: my birthday penny was indeed minted in 1984, the very year I was born.  Coincidentally, it was one of the few areas of the penny that wasn't rendered unrecognizable by stomach acid. I'll spare you a picture.

During my frantic Mother of the Year Google search, I saw a forum with a few comments from crazy moms who said they had cleaned and saved their kid's penny for the scrapbook. I think I might become one of those crazy moms. I might have to reserve a few extra pages of the scrapbook, though, to record the rest of the story for posterity as well. After all, I want my endearing middle child to always remember his perfect design for an exciting Friday night. Future girlfriends, beware!

So now that you know (and maybe wish you didn't), it's decision time! Shall we keep the current title? Or swap it out for one of the MANY other options? Feel free to cast a vote...or recommend your own, since you know I'll have to fill some space in that scrapbook!