so that she will know why she hates tight places...

When Elyn turned 16 months old, her pacis started living in her bed. She only gets "the gold" when she is napping or it's night time. I don't know why "16 months", it's what we did with Nora and, although I know I will never treat them the exact same, I try to keep it equal when I have that power.

Elyn knows the drill...I go in to get her and greet her with all kinds of love-"Good morning baby girl! Did you sleep good? You sure look happy!"-, I pick her up, and then we make an act of saying "bye-bye" to paci while Elyn throws it back into her crib.

Sometimes her aim is pretty good and other times it stinks. And by "stinks", the paci falls on the floor behind the crib. When that happens, I let it lie until we need it again.

My little Elyn is already figuring out how things work though. She knows that if she throws the paci on top of one of her blankets, then she can go back in her room later and pull the blanket towards her, giving her easy access to her paci. She also knows that if she drops it close to the edge of the mattress, she can put her little arm in later and grab it. She LOVES her paci!

I've seen how her mind works, and quite frankly, it's scary. How can she figure those things out at 19 months of age? Sooooooo, I usually re-deposit the paci in the middle of the crib, not on top of a blankets.

This morning, when we were going through our "good morning" ritual, she threw her paci and it fell on the floor, on the back side of the crib. I left it thinking I would go back later and get it.

About an hour later, I am in the kitchen cleaning up from breakfast when I hear Elyn crying.

Now, hearing Elyn crying is not an unusual thing. She has big sister who really likes to antagonize her and take toys out of her hands. I can usually tell when she is giving me the "I DON'T LIKE NORA AND HER SASSINESS" cry.

This cry, however, was a blood curdling scream.

I dropped what I was doing and followed the cry into her bedroom.

I could not find her ANYWHERE and I was starting to panick. I opened the closet door, thinking she had shut herself in and couldn't get out...no Elyn.

I looked behind the recliner in her room, thinking she was trapped behind it...no Elyn.

I am getting panicky because she is crying so hard and I don't see her.

Then, I understand what has happened...she has gone after her paci.

She was trapped underneath her crib. And she could not get out.

I have NO IDEA how she got under the crib. The space is not that large. (Her sister could have never made it with her large head size, so that's probably why I didn't think it was possible.)

I duck down and peer under the crib, and there she is, wild-eyed, screaming, and clutching her paci-the treasure.

I moved the crib and got her out and let her take a few pulls on the beloved paci before we put it back in the bed.

She was so scared and slightly shaking when I finally rescued her. I wanted to cry with her but knew I had to put on a strong face. I kept saying, "You were stuck! You were stuck!" and she kept saying, "tuck. tuck. tuck.". Poor baby.

Her emotions and state-of-mind were not the only things that were injured during the "mission impossible" crawl.

Her poor little back is all scraped up too. Her mattress is lowered down as far as it can go and when she crawled under, the springs tore up her sweet baby flesh. The pictures really don't do it justice:

She is fine, but hopefully she'll never go on another treasure hunt for the paci. Poor baby!