Fingers

Last evening, just as I was on my way out to pick up Steph for our course, Julia had an episode with her finger. It was bound to happen eventually. I mean really what is life with three kids without trauma and drama. We don't have a lot of mishaps but ironically enough, each of the three kids (as well as Steve) have had significant accidents, creating damage and a bloody mess (no punn intended) to one of their fingers.

Joel's incident was the worst. The poor little tot was not quite a year old and just learning to walk. Trying to steady himself before walking down the hallway, he put his hand on the door frame right next to the hinge. Jacob was inside the room and being so young himself was playing a "slam the door game." Yep, Joel's finger was in there. We panicked a lot when the top of his finger was hanging by a thread. Thankfully 911 walked us through it and put the tip back on at the hospital.

Several months ago, a similar thing happened to Jacob. This particular day, Joel decided he wanted privacy in the bathroom. As Jacob was fooling around, lurking in the door way, holding the door frame, Joel slammed the door on him. That was a crazy loud episode with lots of blood. He didn't lose the tip of his finger but he lost the entire nail. It was disgusting.

Last night the kids were playing in the garage. No big deal. Their bikes are in there, their skateboards, the wagon, the hockey nets and sticks and the basketball net. They typically open the garage door and have the driveway and garage to play their sport of choice. Julia decided to go exploring in the tool box and found a neat little utility knife that slides up and down. We didn't know this however until she came in crying with blood all over her shirt. It was quite a deep gouge and blood just keep splurting out and dripping on the floor. This of course gave the appearance of something more severe. She was afraid to tell us what happened because she knew she was into stuff that was off limits. When Steve came to her rescue and said he was not mad she wailed, "Am I gonna DIE?"

By this time I was able to remain calm, administer first aid treatment, calm her down, clean her up, give her hugs, rush out the door and still make it in time for the course (not allowed to be late).

Hopefully that marks the end of our bad luck with fingers before my turn rolls around.