The Sock Monkey Scare

One night, Dolly kept waking up and crying.  We'd leave her, and she'd quiet down.  Around 11:00 P.M., Jim finally went into her room, turned her light on very low, changed her, soothed her, and put her back down.  When he came back to bed, he said, "It was weird.  When I picked her up, she wouldn't get go of that gorilla thing.  She held on to it the whole time, even when I was changing her." 

The "gorilla thing" is this sock monkey, which was my friend Chelsea's baby gift to us:

Chelsea found it on Etsy and was excited because she remembered that I had told her the crib colors were gray and yellow (really mustardish).  She wanted to get a thoughtful, memorable gift, rather than something boring and practical.

Dolly's crib was bare until she turned one.  At that point, I put into the crib a) a bumper I wish I had never bought and paid way too much for (I ordered it RIGHT before the recommendation came out not to use bumpers for babies under one year old), b) a blanket, and c) the sock monkey, in the bottom corner, for decoration.

So, back to Dolly's weird night.   We didn't hear from her again after Jim went in at 11:00.  I left for work the next morning before she woke up.  Then Jim called me while I was at the train station.  He was extremely upset.  He said he had gotten up, gone downstairs, eaten his cereal, and then gone up to get Dolly.  (He knew she was awake but wanted to eat his cereal in peace.)  When he went in to get her, he saw that one of Dolly's fingers was twisted into the yarn of the sock monkey's mouth, and the fingertip was purple.  Three pieces of yarn twisted together made the line of the monkey's mouth:

Somehow Dolly had separated the three and gotten her finger caught.  Jim freaked out because he realized Dolly probably hadn't been holding onto the monkey voluntarily the night before; her finger was probably already stuck, and that was why she wouldn't (couldn't) let go and kept crying.  He worked frantically to free her finger.  It pinkened up once he got it out, but he was still freaked.  When we spoke, there was some discussion of whether he should take her in to the doctor, and he said the only thing they could do was amputate.  No joke, he really thought Dolly might lose her finger.  It regained normal color, and Ever stopped babying that hand after a while.  Jim took her to JoAnn's (our babysitter) as usual, and Ever was A-OK. 

When I got home and examined the crime scene (i.e., the sock monkey's mouth), I didn't feel bad about putting the monkey in her crib.  Who would have imagined her separating that yarn and twisting her finger into it?  But how awful it would have been if she'd lost a finger over something so dumb.  And how incredibly devastated would Chelsea have been?  Thank goodness all ended well.