Danger! Escalator!

To preface this story: Rosie is fine! I may get overdramatic just for storytelling's sake, though so please do not fret.

Friday evening we found ourselves at the mall, passing time before dinner. Major attraction: escalator! Major heart attack-inducing incident: escalator turned foot-hungry monster.

I was riding the escalator down with Rosie, DaddyO waiting patiently at the bottom. All of a sudden I hear a weird noise that sounds like something caught in the escalator. I look over and notice Rosie's foot is in the back corner of the escalator step: her shoe caught on the side of the escalator and was being dragged down. In a blur, I pulled Rosie's foot out. Escalator comes to a halt with her shoe further wedged in, barely poking out. Rosie starts crying. I hand her off to DaddyO and for an inspection.

Rosie was clearly upset (who wouldn't be?!). It was hard to tell what was wrong. There was no initial blood, no exposed flesh or bones. Of course, we were afraid something was broken, what with all those hundreds of tiny foot bones at the mercy of the metal monster of ascending and descending death (overdramatic...called it!).

We hurried off to find ice which led us to the Starbucks. Rosie was handling the whole incident very well, recalling the event: "Escalator. Pinch. Owwwww" There was some blood visible between her pinky and ring toes, though not much. We iced the foot and engaged in major hug-healing. Poor baby! The rest of the evening Rosie's foot was clearly bothering her a bit, but it hadn't swelled and she was able to wiggle her toes, so most likely nothing broken.

After talking to her about escalators, Rosie was clear on the moral of the story: "No side. Middle," referring to where we'll stand the next time we're riding an escalator.

So, no missing toes (though good bye shoe!) but she did end up with a pretty gnarly scrape between her toes. The escalator must have rubbed/pinched her toes together. We've been applying Neosporin in foam-version, which Rosie enjoys since she calls them "bubbles." Rosie was wearing soft shoes (think thick socks with soles) which was probably why it caught so easily. Beware!

We were definitely frightened to the core, thinking of the potential pain that could have been caused, though we are grateful that it ended up being a small scare. We're actually quite lucky that this is the first real scare we've had. It's also made us realize how helpful it is that Rosie is communicative, though now we have to figure out when there's genuine pain or when she's crying wolf.

Cutie toes still in tact! (w/ clown stamp)