Once there was a princess baby named Winnie. One night after the queen and king put Princess Winnie down to sleep in her royal crib, an invisible dragon came and bit the princess' finger. The biting dragon hurt her, so the princess cried and cried.
First the queen came up and checked to see why Princess Winnie was crying, but she couldn't see anything. Then the king came up and checked to see why Princess Winnie was crying, but he couldn't see anything.
Finally, the queen went up one more time to see why Princess Winnie kept crying and crying. The queen used her magic and was able to see the invisible dragon that was biting the princess' finger. She grabbed the princess out of her royal crib and cried out for the king. The king came with his sword and sliced the dragon off the princess' finger, and Princess Winnie finally stopped crying.
The king used his sword to turn the invisible biting dragon into a friendly dragon, and everyone lived happily ever after.
As wonderful a storyteller Seth is, he borrowed the plot from a real-life experience that happened shortly after Christmas.
We HAD put Winnie to bed. She DID keep crying. Both of us went upstairs to see why she was fussing, because it's unusual for her to carry on so for that long. When each of us went up, all we saw was Winnie with her blankie, her baba and her puppy.
When I went up the last time, Winnie had let go of her puppy, and I could finally tell what was wrong. The ring finger on her left hand was totally blue. The string that made up the dog's mouth had gotten twisted around and around her finger and cut off the circulation. I whisked her from her crib and cried out for Seth. He ran upstairs, saw the problem and immediately rushed back down to retrieve a pair of scissors.
As soon as he cut the string and it unwound from Winnie's finger, the blood rushed back in and turned it a healthy pink.
I shudder to think what would have happened if she had given up and gone to sleep; the poor girl would have only nine fingers.
Seth trimmed all the string off the puppy, and Winnie continues to sleep with it every nap and night.
The naughty (and now mouthless) puppy.
Winnie with her puppy. Don't worry, she's not crying because of another
puppy bite; she was upset because she had just woken up from a nap and I
put her back in the crib so I could take a picture.