Our Henry Scare

We had a brief scary episode where we thought Henry was not going to see his third birthday. About two weeks ago Henry, being as talented as he is and as controlled by his nose as he is, unzipped Brett's book bag and found a small zip lock bag with ibuprofen in it which he proceeded to eat. He didn't eat the whole bag; in fact, we had no idea how many he ate. There were still a lot there when we found it. However, Ibuprofen is apparently extremely toxic and we didn't get Henry to the doctor right away--we should have been more proactive, and we were definitely remiss in our parenting here--so he became very sick. He was unable to eat; he was drinking and urinating excessively, and his legs began to shake. So we took him to the vet and ended up having to take him to the emergency vet where they pumped him with iv fluids continuously overnight. Then in the morning, he transferred back to the regular vet where he stayed on the iv for a day and a half longer. So he went in on Tuesday and came home Thursday night. Luckily, that flushing of his system saved him. They don't think that he suffered any lasting damage to his system. He is doing well and we learned several potent lessons:
1. don't keep ibuprofen in baggies even if it is in a zipped bag.
2. as soon as we suspect Henry has gotten into something dangerous, induce vomiting with a mixture of peroxide and water
3. ibuprofen is toxic to animals
4. the sooner you seek treatment, the more likely everything will be fine, and the less it will cost in the long run
5. Don't think the dog just needs a day to work it out of his system.
And there are probably a few other things we learned along the way, too. The one positive consequence is that if we are going to make parenting mistakes it is better that it is with our dog than with our daughter. But that isn't really a silver-lining kind of positive consequence--it is just slightly better than the alternative. Needless to say it was a tense week and
we are glad to be beyond it.

Phoebe, on the other hand, is doing great. She had a cold, again, this past week, but she remained in good spirits and it didn't become anything more than a cold. She is talking like crazy and even stringing words together to create little phrases. She is finally happy in her new room at daycare. Just before Christmas break, she transitioned to a new room because she was ready to move up with her age group, but she does not adjust to change well. And of course staying home for almost three weeks over the holidays did not help her with the adjustment. So this past week she finally felt fully acclimated to her surroundings and was ready to take her coat off and stay a while.