On Bunnies, and Choking.
So for several weeks now, Isaac has been on us to "go see animals." We live quite a long way from the Toronto Zoo, which is quite expensive, and takes at least two days to see all of. Challenging when one is potty training a toddler.

We do however, live at the heart of Southern Ontario's lively agricultural industry, so we took him to Andrew's Scenic Acres U-Pick, to look at the 'animals.'

Well, the animals in question were a large number of bunnies, a small flock of very majestic looking hens and roosters running around a big fenced in area with two longsuffering goats. I should mention that the bunnies were in hutches seperate from the other animals.

So we got to the farm, and after the obligatory washroom break, headed for the animals. Isaac saw the bunnies, and went nuts. Then he discovered (thanks to Mom) that if you push a blade of grass into the hutch, the bunny will eat it quite excitedly.

Well this was fine for a few minutes, and then we went to check out the chickens and rooster, but Isaac "wanna see bunnies?" all the time, so we went back.

Then the keeper of the bunnies showed up, lifted one out so Isaac could pet her, and started feeding them all lush juicy clover. Bunny heaven. Isaac managed to aquire some of the clover that had fallen, and you can now imagine how the rest of the afternoon turned out.

Yes, so Isaac spent the afternoon going too and fro from the hutches, and playing on the occasional playground toy, and asking at every available opportunity "see bunnies?" It was quite a day.

We were all exhausted, piled into the car, and were at a stop light in Milton, when Isaac starts choking. Normally he figures it out after a few seconds, but this time he didn't. He kept choking worse and worse.

So I pop on the Hazard Lights, dive out of the car, wrestle him out of the car seat, and start pounding on his back in the middle of the road. It soon dislodged, and he started howling, so Noelle had to get out and take him, while I backed the car into a nearby gas station.

Several observations spring from this.
1. The other drivers were really good. If this had been downtown Toronto, I might have gotten bad looks, or even honking as people went around me, but everybody here was pretty cool. Realized I had a bit of an emergency on my hands, and calmly went around us.

2. Once I got Isaac out of the car, I wasn't exactly sure what the best procedure was for getting an object dislodged from a toddler's windpipe. I started whapping him on the back, but not in the way that I later found out is highly reccomended by the American Red Cross.

So if you are curious, go here: http://www.babycenter.com/general/todfirstaid/toddler/toddlerills/11241.html
and look up what to do if you are around a choking toddler. It's about a three minute read.

3. Isaac doesn't get yogurt covered raisins while riding in the car anymore. Normally they're not a problem, but if we had been on the 401 doing 120 km an hour, it would have been a much bigger issue for us to pull over.

So that's The Laddies Home Journal public service message for the week. Enjoy.

And no, we're not buying him a bunny. Not for a while anyway. I heard somewhere they make really wierd noises.

So no. No bunnies.