"Great! His language is good for his age, his behavior is typical for his age, he's doing great except his finger is about to fall off."
They were taken aback, a little.
At this time I realized what I just said and how it probably sounded so I felt the need to explain. I'll explain briefly for you as well.
Joshua is missing his left hand but he did have a little finger-nubbin on the outboard side of his wrist (like a tiny pinkie). It's been hurting him for a while because it takes some abuse. Last week it started to get purple and swollen, then darker and more swollen, then darker and less swollen, then black and hard. Today it fell off. :(
It was lost for a while but then Heather spotted it on the carpet upstairs. No random mini-digits floating around our house, no sir.
A little later Heather told Joshua to clean up his mess. He wanted to see his hand (he interchangeably refers to his finger as his hand, you can imagine his confusion since he's missing both now) so she told you "you can't see your hand until you clean up your mess." That's not really a phrase we use in our house but if the shoe fits...
During dinner we discussed what to do with Joshua's finger. Here are the options that we came up with:
- Throw it in the trash. Nobody liked this idea that much.
- Plant it in the back yard so it would grow a new Joshua. Joshua didn't like this one because he doesn't want another Joshua.
- Save it forever. The jury is still out on this one.
- Put it in under his pillow so the finger-fairy could buy it.
We had to stop because some of us were getting turned off by the conversation. After dinner we discussed it some more and Joshua chose #4 but only after Lora explained that the finger-fairy would take his finger and give him money for it. Everyone here knows that daddy is the tooth-fairy (we don't promote belief in such things as a real tooth-fairy) so that means mommy gets to be the finger-fairy. The hard part now is figuring out is how much the finger-fairy pays for fingers. Not sure what the going rate is for your child's finger. Parenting is hard...
In memoriam, I thought I'd share a few pics of Joshua with his finger.
One last thing. I struggled with how to title this post, being that it's a little odd. Here are a few alternate titles I considered:
- Giving the Finger
- I Make Blood (this is a Joshua-ism, perhaps I'll share on that another time)
- Watermelon Seed
- The Five Finger Discount
- Dude, Have you seen my finger?
- One more Reason Joshua will Never be Left-Handed
