Very scary morning

5:45am is too early for this much reality.

Elias has been a bit "off" lately: weird sleeping habits, and gets WAY overwrought when I refuse to read to him (in particular, my bed and the bathroom are outside the prescribed reading region). Perhaps it's all the bug bites that he has on the left side of his face, making him look all lumpy and probably causing him some pain/itchyness. Anyway, I was counting my blessings that he got up at 5:30am this morning, not 5am, and only cried in my face for about 1 minute, not 45min, when (half asleep, from bed) I said "no" to If You Give a Pig a Pancake. So he decided to entertain himself by getting me to take him into bed with me, jumping up and down, standing and walking on me, and looking out the window above my bed, and fiddling with the blinds--which was actually sufficient for me to fall half-asleep again (Ah, the powers of mommydom!) Then he started whining again and sort of fell on my face, and for some reason I couldn't roll him off. I looked, and he had the cord to the blinds around his neck just like a noose and was choking!! That'll wake you up. I lifted him up to free him, and after one whimper he was back to normal. Whew. I knew drawcords (and really all sorts of loopy ropelike things) were one of the more dangerous things around the house and am pretty careful about having them out of reach (as this one would have been, under normal circumstances), but now I have direct experience to drive that point home. Please let it be a warning to you, too.