Bad Mommy

I've started letting Alice play for a 1/2 hour - 45 minutes in the morning when she wakes up. She loves to just talk and play with the toys in her crib so I figured I'd just let her do that and use that time to get up and shower and make her breakfast. So today was going great, she sounded all happy and chipper on the monitor as usual so there was no reason to go check on her - so I thought. After about a half hour I go in to change her diaper and all appears well. She was happy and smiling and then I caught a glimpse of something stuck to the roof of her mouth! It was orangish yellow so my first instinct was that it was food from last night (long story short, she had some 3rd foods that were EXTRA thick - so thick in fact that it got stuck to the roof of her mouth and she gagged on it and refused to eat much).

I ran for the phone to call Matt, bawling my eyes out, deathly afraid to fish this thing out of her mouth for fear that she'd choke on it. Matt talks me off the ledge and calms me down enough so that I can fish it out. Well it wasn't food - it was PAPER! I unfolded this wad of slimy yellow paper and on it reads Woman's Exchange - Memphis Tennessee. One of the toys in the crib is a Raggedy Ann doll I got from GG when I was a kid and apparently there was still a little tag on it SAFETY PINNED under her clothing.

I'm grateful she didn't choke on it - and I'm even more grateful she didn't get the safety pin.

I feel like such a bad mom today.

On the plus side, letting her play by herself seems to be curing Alice's separation anxiety, knock on wood. I can now fold laundry two feet away from her without so much as a peep out of her. I guess this means more housework for me. ;)