What’s a splinter?
After rest time yesterday (the boys and I both took good naps after such a busy day at the park and bike riding), the boys wanted to play out front, C on his bicycle and J on his tricycle. J also enjoyed hitting the limbs on the pear tree with a toy light saber. It made the blooms fly off as with a strong wind and you should have heard him laugh and giggle. It was contagious .
C decided to check out what his brother was doing to the pear tree and walked in the grass. Before he had gone 3 steps, he stepped on something and got a splinter in the bottom of his foot. Major crying.
I got C sitting down in the lawn chair that I was occupying and looked at his foot. I could see something, but with such a dirty foot, I wasn’t sure what I was looking at. It could have been a blood blister or just a clump of dirt. Anyway, to be safe, I got the tweezers and fingernail clippers. I needed the clippers to snip off the piece of skin that had been dislodged so I could get a better look. C got hysterical. I said everything I could to get him to calm down - explanation about infection, getting his foot to feel better after the splinter was out, explaining what a splinter was, etc. I even offered him a sucker (very unusual considering I had a roast in the crock pot and was eminently anticipating his Daddy to be home for dinner. C held on to the sucker, still wrapped. (Meanwhile J ate at least 4 suckers while I was dealing with C…)
In the end, Daddy got home while I was still pleading and arguing with C. Daddy held C’s arms and I held C’s foot and I pulled out a 1/2 inch long splinter. C was busy kicking me with his other foot in my shoulder. We are watching his foot for signs of infection.
C wanted to put the splinter in a ziplock baggy so “no one else will step on it and get hurt.” He even took it to bed and placed it on his night stand.
C looked so sad - bandaids on the backs of both feet/heels where he had blisters, a bandaid on the bottom of his foot from the splinter, and walking on his toes on the foot that had had the splinter in it. What a fun day and yet what an icky day physically for the little guy!
That night as I was putting him in bed, he asked me numerous questions - What’s a splinter? Why did it make my foot bleed? What is blood? Why does my foot hurt? When will it feel better? Why was there a splinter in the yard? What does blood do? How do I get the blood back in me?
He also stated the obvious - “I think I’ll wear shoes so I don’t get another splinter.”
This is something that his Mommy still hasn’t learned. I got a splinter out of my foot just a couple of months ago. I have and always will be barefoot as often as possible!