The mysterious penny

It's been a week since Parker woke Kris and I up, saying her tummy hurt. It was midnight last Friday morning and I asked her why her tummy hurt. She simply said "I ate my money". We didn't know whether to believe her or not, earlier in the week a girl choked on a nickel at daycare. (No worries, this child is notorious for eating non-edible things) Needless to say, we were certain in those wee hours of the morning, that Parker was just remembering the nickel episode.

However, later that morning as I was getting her and sister ready for daycare, I noticed my old wallet next to her bed. Have I ever mentioned this child is a bit of a hoarder? I guess that will be a post for another day. Anyway, I noticed the change pocket of the wallet had been opened. So I took some change out of my new wallet and asked Parker which one she thought she ate. She pointed right to the penny and then to her tummy and said "I ate dat one, it is making my tummy hurt!" So we sent her off to daycare, as I called the pediatrician, who said to bring her in. So we did later that morning. The visit included Parker's first x-ray, which showed as plain as day the penny in her tummy. The doctor suggested we wait for it to pass since it wasn't lodged anywhere it wasn't supposed to be.

So for the past week, Kris and I have been on fishing patrol, waiting for the penny to re-appear. My mom and our daycare provider have helped in this as well. However, this would also happen to be the week Parker decided to be potty-trained, meaning she has been doing the #2 business in the toilet instead of her pull-up. SO that has added an extra little element of fun in the penny search. My mother-in-law, Pat has asked the question the best, "has Parker banked a penny yet?" So while we can say the penny has not made a second appearance, we can probably say its been flushed during Parker's poop on the potty project! She says she wants to be rich when she grows up, we're going to have to teach her to go about it in a much different way!