The Case of the Disappearing Band-Aids

This spring, JayJay learned how to boost himself into the large pine tree in our yard. His favorite thing now is to climb the tree. If I can't see him playing on the grass, I just have to look up to find him.

Of course, Max wanted to climb the tree too. But he couldn't get into the tree on his own. He pestered me for help, which I refused to give him in an effort to postpone his tree climbing until he obtained what I felt would be a more physically capable age. I explained that if he wanted to climb the tree, he had to be able to get in and out of it himself. He's only four and I hoped that he wouldn't figure it out until next summer. My hopes were dashed when he figured out how to get in and out of the tree on his own, only a few weeks later than JayJay. He grabs the lowest branch, which is over his head, and walks up the trunk until he can wrap his legs around the branch too, then wriggles until he is sitting upright. He is now in the tree just as much as JayJay. Sometimes he climbs so high he scares himself (and me), but that doesn't stop him from climbing so high. Max's physical abilities continue to amaze me. He runs faster and has more stamina than his six-year-old brother.

After one of Max's morning tree climbing episodes, he came into the house with a long, bleeding scratch across the palm of his hand. Since it was too long for a single band-aid, my man bandaged it with two, their edges overlapping slightly so they stuck together in one rectangle.

Later that afternoon, we took the family to play at a local park. JayJay, Max, and Third ran around on the playground equipment while I took the dog into the field so she could play too. My man supervised the boys. He has now named the playground "The Apparatus of Death" because of Third's tendency to repeatedly walk off the top platform, whether someone is there to catch him or not.

Pretty soon they needed a bathroom break. When Max came out of the bathroom, the two band-aids on his hand were gone. My man looked all over for those band-aids, not to put them back on, but because nothing is grosser than finding someone's dirty old band-aid where you are playing, or even worse, stuck to your shoe or something. No matter how hard he looked, my man could not find those band-aids anywhere. He gave up and we went about our day.

Hours later, we were getting our boys ready for bed. My man lifted up Third's shirt to undress him and put his pajamas on and made a startling discovery. There were the band-aids, perfectly taped to Third's tummy, as if purposefully placed there. We asked Max how they had gotten there. Here is his version of the story:

"Well, I needed to go to the baffroom. Water was going down in the toilet that was right there without a door and it would come back up and it would go in a flood. Ender went in it and I took him out of the baffroom and the band-aid fell off me and I thought they landed in the grass but they disappeared on Third's stomach."

So apparently, there was some sort of trouble with the urinal that made Max believe it was going to overflow so he grabbed Third and carried him out. When he carries Third, he has to wrap both arms around his waist and heave. So somehow the band-aids must have transferred to Third's tummy while Max was carrying him. When searching for the lost band-aids, my man never considered looking on the other children for them.