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Summer days

My apologies for the silence! We took the girls to Germany for a few days of relaxation and fun. My ladies are expert travelers and we did have a fabulous time. Eva got some well-deserved vanilla ice cream for the first time (big!) and Zoe managed to stay all night in her crib (really big!) In fact, the only glitch was when we found ourselves about a half mile behind a rather serious accident (complete with helicopters and countless rescue vehicles). In Germany there is apparently no urgency to restoring the flow of traffic, to the point where the clean up crews were actually sweeping up the broken glass by the time we drove past the site. What that meant was that we had about an hour of complete standstill, in the heat of summer.

At the point where other drivers started walking around, chatting with each other, we realized we weren’t going anywhere and shut off the engine. Then we opened all the windows, and finally the doors, trying to get some cross-ventilation going. Because when it’s 80 degrees outside, the inside of a car can become insufferable, even fatal. In fact, there have already been 19 children who have died this year from overheating in hot cars. On average about 30 to 40 die a year, some from being intentionally left inside a car, others accidentally forgotten and the rest from climbing inside a parked vehicle to play.
Myself, I can handle just about anything. But two little babies with limited abilities to regulate body heat can’t be sitting in a hot car in the sun. We took them out, walked them around, tried to find some shade. Finally, despite the dirty looks from other stranded motorists, I made Gernot turn on the engine and blast the air conditioning for 15 minutes to give us all a break. Maybe people thought I was crazy, but so what. So let this be my little message to you to make sure you lock up your car when you get home so no curious critter can get inside and for pete’s sake, if you are prone to forgetting your kid in the car (it happens!) try sticking your wallet under his seat so you’ll have an obvious reminder.

Dr. Lara Zibners, Jul 01, 2010

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