A Very Near Miss

The broadband situation continues to be a burr in the, otherwise pristine, woolen trousers of our life in England. ;-) We decided to tell the incompetent Tiscali to go you-know-what itself (instead of us) and are switching the line back to BT (British Telecom). The only downside is that now we may not have broadband at home until September 11^th. Gah. I try not to dwell on the fact that I am missing all of you, my facebook friends, my Skyping family. In addition to getting some very nice time in with my husband, our sitter Gigi has been acting as my "friend" while here (for being only 17, she is a hoot to hang with), so it hasn't been unbearably lonely.

Everybody seems to be adjusting to the change easily and happily. Everyone, that is, except the Animal. He has been an unholy terror in almost every situation. In the car he gets out of his seatbelt, turns around backwards and taunts his brothers. At places of natural beauty he refuses to walk, pulling the shade of the stroller over himself or leaps out of the stroller without notice and runs away to the nearest waters’ edge.

Indoor places of interest pose the largest challenge, though….

We went to Bath a few days ago (about an hour’s drive away) and paid a handsome sum to enter the Roman Baths to the see the ancient site, the best preserved Roman bath ruins site in…. the world? (Who knows, without the internet at home to verify anything, I have only my rather, um, flexible memory to depend on for information.) The Animal started out well, minding his Mama and holding my hand, the more we got into the baths, though, the more he wanted to race ahead. The more he wanted to race ahead, the more Mama lost him. The more I lost him, the more convinced I became that I wouldn’t find him until I heard a giant, joyous splash followed by his hoots and hollers. He certainly would’ve been easy to find if he’d launched himself into the main pool that the entire museum is built around.

Thankfully, this didn’t come to pass, but it was looking imminent for a while. Unfortunately, my picture of him standing perilously close to the edge of the bath/pool is on the computer at home, so this lovely photo from the Bath's website will have to do. You can imagine him climbing atop one of those broken pillars and almost launching himself into the warm, green waters.

I wrote that last part about four days ago....

An addendum needs to be added now, though, as the Animal was very nearly lost yesterday. No, I am not being dramatic.

We went to a local swimming pool/gym yesterday that has a fantastic play/swimming area with little waterslides, kids running around, etc. They also have a Costa Cafe that has free wi-fi.... which I am a much bigger fan of than swimming, if truth be told. So I was upstairs getting my twitter, blog, and facebook on.... using tweetdeck for the first time in weeks and LOVING it. Gigi was with me and then went down to the pool help out Daddy-007. Through a series of people not looking or standing where they were supposed to (family members AND lifeguards), suddenly no one knew where the Animal had gone.

To quote my husband, "it is goddammed cliche" to hear the next part of this story. It was only for a few moments, but during that time the Animal had wandered out to waters he shouldn't have and swept in a current to a corner of the pool where Daddy-007 found him struggling, underwater. He fished him out and put him over his shoulder and the Animal proceeded to vomit up more water than one would think possible.

Gigi ran to get me from the cafe, I ran to get my baby. I took him all wrapped in a towel and he vomited one more water burst and then started getting verysleepy. The staff advised we bring him to the hospital in Southampton to make sure that there wasn't anymore water in his lungs, "secondary drowning" being a consideration after near-misses such as this.

[Deep, shuddery breath.]

We brought him in, even though he was back to his regular self after an hour. The doctors checked him out and he was given a clean bill of health.

All is well that ends well, they say, but this was a very scary reminder that young children can NEVER be left unattended in the water, even for a moment, even if they are good swimmers, even if they are comfortable in the water. I want to write more, but my time in town with wi-fi access has come to an end again. Sufficed to say, we are all sobered up and contemplating life and the joy of children and how much we love our little ones....