Burned

This is a shot of poor Josiah's blistering hand about 24 hours after he put his hand on the glass cover of our gas fireplace... Poor boy! Our fireplace has a thermostat instead of a switch, so you don't just turn it off and on. It goes off and on by itself depending on what you set the temperature at. I noticed the fire had been on and had just turned off when I went to get the door as a friend of mine and her kids were coming over. I came up to our living room and Josiah started wailing and walking toward me from the fireplace holding his hands. I took him to the sink to run it under cold water and gave him a cold cloth to hold on it for a while, but I really didn't realize how bad it was for about half an hour. He would stop crying for a minute or two and then start howling again and shaking his hand. To be honest, I thought he was overreacting... (Feelin' like mother of the year now...) Aaaanyway, we gave him a bowl of cool water and he pretty much kept his hand in it for 4 hours straight until bedtime. He managed to fall asleep holding a cold cloth. Then in the morning, it looked like the picture above! I felt so bad for him. Once I saw how bad it was, I felt like I should have gushed over him more, but what can I say? I underestimated the damage. I'm still not sure what he was doing when he touched the fireplace. He's never touched it before. I have a feeling he unintentionally put his hand there when he was getting up on the hearth to look out the window and watch our friends arrive. Regardless, he emphasized quite strongly at supper that night that he would NEVER touch the fireplace again. Then he added that sometimes the oven gets hot (we've warned him of this too) and he will NEVER touch the oven! So, lesson learned I guess.

To further add to Josiah's drama, he's had a terrible bug of some kind and now he's developed croup again. (He had it a couple of times when he was younger.) So the last couple of days have been pretty bad for him. He sort of protects his right hand like a wounded animal and he has these terrible coughing fits where he sounds like a barking seal. Funny thing is, he's a real trooper- he really never complains. I'm sure I would be whining much more if it were me! Dwayne and I agreed yesterday that he was our hero for the day.