heart-stopping saturday

Today I actually wanted to write down how our Pisa and Florence Trip went last week but then Nayla drank some sort of poisonous oil and Maia got lost at one of the biggest markets of the year.

It all started relatively well. I woke up late, although not too smoothly,which always gets me cranky no matter how long I sleep. D took me out of a dream, which seemed to address my current self-reflection attempts. Just as I was about to figure out why I had to crawl through that tiny, stony, dark, and claustrophia-triggering tunnel to get to that huge (ancient) beautiful room (more like a temple-hall), Dario woke me up to get some. And he got some, alright. A piece of my mind, is what he got. "The ONE time the kids decide to leave me alone in the morning so I can sleep a little longer, you really had to decide to take their place and wake me?!?!"
I got breakfast in bed and that shut me up.
After a short heart-attack about Nayla having pulled out all the keys of my laptop's keyboard, I made a huge cup of coffee, which I just didn't get to and then proceeded to get the kids ready for our lunch invitation at my friend Sabi's house.
The meal was great, we had a nice time, decided to move on quickly to all go the big market in our village together. Apparently this is a yearly event and draws people from all over the state and even across the borders (Germany and Switzerland).
Before we left (and Sabi was on a tight schedule) I asked for just one cup of coffee. I had one sip before Nayla (now 2.5 yrs. old) appeared next to me with her mouth wide open and a certain guilty look on her face.
I saw a trace of brown above her lip and decided to smell her mouth. It reeked of some pungent volatile (essential) oil. The stuff you put in a tray over a candle.
I looked around and found a small, half-empty bottle on the floor. When I read the label, I tried not to panic .... which meant not to show it to Dario, who really is the one who always panics about stuff like that.
Keep away from children!
health-hazardous.
can cause lung-damage when ingested.
do not induce vomiting!
contains cassia-oils, which can cause allergic reactions.
etc.
I made her drink water, wiped her mouth with a wet towel, called my father (a doc), who wasn't home; we called Sabi's neighbor then (also a doc), who thank God was home and who finally advised us to call poison control.
I am not used to these kind of worries. Maia stopped taking choking hazards into her mouth when she was two (she understood ....or let's say...she adhered to the rules), and we were glad if she drank or ate anything at all. Nayla on the other hand - a great eater, which we are endlessly happy about - really does try anything, and that means everything. She is one of those kids you don't have to force to drink her medicine (when needed) and who you are going to have to keep the cleaning agents away from, for she will probably try it. The other day she traded a piece of candy for an olive. The girl is special, I tell you. ;)
Anyway, the lady from the poison-control hotline was very helpful and gave me a list of things to watch out for, none of which seemed to appear, thank GOD.
So we continued with our afternoon plans of hitting the market, leaving my full but now cold coffee cup sitting on the kitchen table. (This whole coffee skipping routine today got me to make myself a cup right now. ...probably not the smartest thing, given that it is after 10pm.)

We finally made it to the market around 3:30pm. Our little village looked like Chinatown today. Buzzing with people. We had a good time walking around, mingling, looking at all the stands, letting the girls ride on the kiddie-train and going up with the fire-engine's ladder ..or crane..whatever it is called. It was damn high, I tell you but the kids loved it.
After an hour or so we said Goodbye to Sabi and her family and decided to continue strolling for a last round before heading home up the hill.
Just after D bought his newspaper-rolled funnel full of hot chestnuts, Maia disappeared.
What followed was a search going from casual, to more intense, to near panic at the end.
I called so many people to help find Maia's whereabouts. I had neighbors go on a search around our house to see if she had gone home (by herself). I asked one of the many Djs to call her out missing. I left my number at the icecream parlor at the center of town, in case someone dropped her off (per instructions from the DJ's announcement). I squeezed through the masses, up and down and across, over and over again. I asked vendors to look out for her and to catch her if she walked by. I told Dario to stop calling me, for my battery was blinking low and I was waiting on call backs. He finally left the stroller on the side of the street and joined in the search, with Nayla on his shoulders.
After about an hour of searching without success I started to lose my cool. As I felt the tears well up, I took a deep breath and reminded myself of where I was: This is not a problem. This is freakin' Vorarlberg. Kids get lost and returned here all the time.
But the little paranoid mom in me kept on reminding me that this was still the 21st century and anything can happen anywhere. The likeliness isn't as high here and with this thought I decided to stick. It worked. I didn't lose it.
I walked through the bustling market one more time and then pulled out my phone to call the cops. Just as I was going to ask someone of the Austrian equivalent of 911, I received a phonecall from someone telling me that my daughter was waiting in front of the electronics shop....just a few feet from where she was lost.
I thanked whoever that was and bolted over there.
The couple (with a group of friends) who I found standing with her had apparently waited with her for the past 45 minutes and were just about to go to the police themselves.
I was so relieved I wanted to hug and slap that kid at the same time. I went with the hug and told her how much she had scared me.
I was told that Maia had approached the woman and had told her that she can't find us anymore. When she was asked where she lived, Maia apparently answered "in a cave". (whatever the heck that is supposed to mean.) and when asked where her father worked, she responded "in a cave, too." ;) ...hmmm maybe it's the way you get to our house...or maybe the fact that our apartment is very shady.....but I sure don't hope it's because of the fact that Dario has been super-lazy with taking them out these past two weeks. (I've been complaining about that already.)

Anyway, I am glad as I can be that she was o.k. ...and I gotta teach that child our phonenumber and address!!!! My neighbor recommended to write the kids' phonenumbers on their arms with a marker when going out to such places (full of people).

I told Maia, later in the evening, that she was going to have to remember our number and this way, if she ever would get lost, she would know.
"But I don't have a phone," she dryly said. ;)