More on Emry

I realize I blog more about Emry than I do Ethan. But Emry is at that age where she can do the funniest things. And Ethan…well, he’s just pulled everything out of my cupboard again, fallen over and hit his head again, pulled something out of the trash again – you get the idea.

Last week with Emry it was a Band-Aid. Unlike many children, Emry is not fascinated with Band-Aids. However, I had one on because it was one of those weeks where every finger had a paper cut on it. I put a Band-Aid on a really bad one when I went to work that morning because I knew I would be folding a lot of paper and did not wish to re-open the cut and get blood all over the very nice community master plans I was binding. I still had it on when I put Emry down for a nap that afternoon, so she wanted one, too. Off she scurried to find her Star Wars Band-Aids, muttering to herself that she needed to find the trees (aka: arrows) on the wrapper so she could pull the package apart and then pull off the backs. That done, she handed it to me and showed me the finger it needed to go on which was the right pointer. Most kids would now consider themselves fully recovered from their scratch. Instead, a look of distress came over her face and she almost started crying.

“Mama, these fingers don’t work!”

She wiggled the fingers of her right hand the Band-Aid was not on.

“They don’t work!” she cried again.

“Emry, what doesn’t work?” I asked. For the fingers could obviously wiggle. Did she mean they all needed Band-Aids? Or the one she had on needed to go on another finger? As she was getting more upset by the second, I was trying to understand as quickly as possible.

“They don’t work!” Her distress was rising, but this time she gestured with the fingers in an attempt to put them in her mouth. And a light came on!

The ultrasound picture we have of Emry has her with her left hand up over her forehead as if she’s some sort of drama-queen actress about to faint. She was only a couple of months old when that gesture returned except across her nose and combined with putting her right pointer and middle fingers into her mouth to suck for comfort. When she’s upset or tired, her right fingers go in her mouth while her left arm goes up over her nose. It’s always both gestures – never one or the other. And since she was tired and about to go down for a nap…well, a Band-Aid on her right pointer finger was distressing. She couldn’t put it in her mouth and the other fingers “wouldn’t work”.

So, I moved the Band-Aid to her left pointer finger, she cuddled up in my lap, popped her right fingers in her mouth, her left arm up over her nose, heaved a great sigh of relief…and everything in her three-year-old world was right once again.