Other Things I Learned
Andres is Grumpy When...
He was (and still is) grumpy, will say "No" to everything and cries a
lot when one of three things is the case:
- He's tired
- He's hungry
- He's caught a bug (even though it might not show visible symptoms yet)
Get Liability Insurance
This is something I didn't think about until (sh)it happened - luckily we
already had family coverage without planning for it.
Andres threw a tin can over the balcony.
5 stories below there was a garage with lots of new cars parked outside.
The tin can hit a car and a dent was formed.
The next day he did it again with a shard of a broken flower pot - dent
#2. Cost to get the car repaired: about 2500$ or 2000 Euros. He was about
two years old at the time.
He scratched the side of my car with a stone at age 3 years and 6 months
(a deep, long scratch).
He has shut down a running escalator by pressing the STOP button (this
could have caused major injury to persons riding it at the time - luckily it
was running empty).
Stuff like this happens so fast there was no chance of me intervening.
Once I'd noticed it was too late.
Insurance is the only answer.
Drowning Scare
[Andres was almost 3 at the time this happened]
This is really, really, really scary. If you've never seen a child
drowning, prepare to be shocked! It happens really quickly and without a
sound :-(. Lesson Learned: Never leave your child out of your eyes near a
swimming pool or a full bathtub for even a moment if she can't swim!
We were in Spain for holidays for a week and they were absolutely
marvelous! Great weather, food and lots of relaxation. We experienced a huge
scare, though. Andres was playing at the entry point of the swimming pool,
which consisted of a couple of steps leading to the shallow area. I decided
to float to the deep part on a small rubber dingy. I'd swum a couple of
meters when I looked back, wanting to ask Andres if he didn’t want to ride
in the dingy with me. I got the shock of my life! Andres was in the water
with the water level at the top of his head. His hands were in the air but
he was hardly thrashing about or making any noise. He was drowning with no
way to make me notice. I dashed back and grabbed him out of the water and
placed him with his stomach on my thigh, head down. He was choking. He
recovered fast, but had there been a longer delay I can’t imagine what would
have happened. I'd never imagined that he wouldn't thrash or that this could
happen so fast. It did and we need to teach him how to swim as soon as
possible!
Airport Scare
[Andres was almost 3 at the time this happened]
The second (and thankfully last) scare we had was at our departure from
Spain at the airport. There was a long queue before the check in counter and
Andres refused to stay with us, preferring to wander about and check out the
counter and any other stuff which grabbed his attention. We reached the
counter itself and we were discussing some detail when I lost sight of
Andres. There was quite a crowd in the departure hall and when I walked to
the point where I’d seen him last just seconds ago he was nowhere to be
seen. I walked up and down the whole huge departure hall several times but
there was not trace of him. I was underway for perhaps 10 minutes but it
seemed like hours. I was already thinking about how we’d handle a missing
child while we’d miss our flight back home. We decided to part ways in
search of him, while keeping in touch with our mobile phones. Just when we
were about to restart our search when who almost runs into me? Andres!
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