Little Bear

I don't know why but it seems lately that the only time I post is when something bad happens. I'm sorry for that but in reality good things happen with the kids as well. I just don't have the time I used to, to blog about it. I also put some serious thought into whether or not I really want to put this memory down for Arabella. But in the end I decided that should she look back and read this, she will understand that no parent is perfect; that we try to do everything we can to make sure she is safe and kept out of harms way. But in the end, things happen, sometimes things that you could never imagine happening, nor would you want to imagine them happening to your child because you would go insane thinking of all of the "what if's."

So on the 15th Adam and I put the kids to bed. I was in the process of wrapping Christmas gifts and he was assembling her bike. I had it planned that we would not be "those" parents who wait until Christmas Eve and try to prepare everything. Sometime after 11:30 we heard Arabella whimpering. She has a tendency to do it so we left her alone, just like we do every night. We finished up what we were doing and Adam excused himself to the restroom. I said I'd check on Arabella. I went to her room and clicked on her tiny monitor light. My eyes weren't adjusting so well to the darkness. I went to pick her up and she started screaming "ow, ow, ow!" I quickly ran over and turned the lamp on. I went to pick her up again and was trying to get her to drop her little blue bear. That's when I realized she couldn't. My heart sunk as I saw this little black finger tip attached to the bear. For lack of appropriate terms, I FLIPPED OUT! I ran her to the changing table screaming the entire way. I want to say it was something like "Oh my God, NO, Oh my God, NO!" but it's hard to say what all came out of my mouth. Obviously whatever I said was enough to get Adam to run into the room. As soon as I saw him I yelled "CUT IT OFF, CUT IT OFF!" He quickly whipped out his pocket knife and cut the strings that had wrapped around my poor baby's finger. Slowly the blood flow came back to her finger and Mommy calmed down. Arabella was still crying about it hurting, but who can blame her. We let her stay up for a few hours after that so that we could monitor her finger. It appears as though everything is normal, there's a string line that remains even now, but the tip is warm to the touch, she can bend her knuckle and she's using her finger as though nothing happened. She still tests its bend ability for me and says "binka" when she does. She can also grab and squeeze my fingers. I really don't believe any permanent damage was done. None the less I'm still watching it carefully.

Back to the bear...after all was said and done Adam took the bear to "doctor" him up. In other words I made him remove all the strings from the bear's mouth. Unfortunately, Arabella keeps asking us if her bear is okay because she no longer has a place to feed the bear his bottle. I feel sad that it came down to removing the strings all together, but I will NEVER let the kids play or at least sleep with another stuffed animal that has a mouth sewn on it. They removed buttons from animals because of the choking hazard. But apparently they did nothing to make sure that the stringed mouths of these animals were sewn on properly, not just tacked into place. All of this took place while she was SLEEPING. I do not want this to happen to another child. I've always been leery of stuffed animals with button eyes rather than sewn on eyes, but never once did a string mouth cross my mind that it could cause harm to a child. I was sadly wrong. So if you're a parent and reading this, please make sure you keep the strings on the mouths of stuffed animals away from your child(ren).

We got very, very lucky. Adam and I had been thinking of calling it an early night and had we done so, Arabella very well could be minus a finger tip today. We don't acknowledge her moans at night unless it's a full blow scream, but I checked on her that night. We must have had an angel watching over us.