Recently I got a new board book for Bella, A Picnic with Monet
. It’s a cute little book that weds 10 Monet paintings with a simple rhyming text. Bella loves it and I love having a book for her that has fine art pictures that I also enjoy looking at.
Fine art books like this one seem to be a new trend in publishing for the toddler set and I hope to eventually acquire a whole set of these board books. However, the board books I’ve been able to find thus far are all impressionist paintings and I could wish for a greater variety.
Tonight as we were saying evening prayer, I had a sudden brainstorm: How cool would it be to have board books for Bella with a selection of good fine art images of Christ, Mary and the saints? I’ve been showing her the pictures and statues in church, of course, and we have quite a few Madonnas hanging around the house; but I’d love to have a board book that I could read with her and which she could page through on her own.
She loves carrying around her books and frequently sits down and flips through them, looking at the pictures and chattering to herself. She especially loves one book that has a photo of a dog in it. She picks it up, opens it to the dog and then begins making her doggie noise: “uffh, uffh, uffh.” Wouldn’t it be neat to see her getting as excited over pictures of Mary and Baby Jesus?
I do have a couple of fine art picture books, A Child’s Book of Prayer in Art
, and a Nativity story with images from the Metropolitan Museum. But I don’t let her carry around the picture books for obvious reasons; they’d be confetti by the end of the day.
Given the popularity of educational books and toys for the toddler set, I can’t help but feel there’s a market here waiting to be exploited. If only I knew someone in Catholic publishing so I could drop a bug into their ear. This is a great project because it wouldn’t cost much. It wouldn’t need a writer, just an editor to select a few pictures. And I bet with the entire history of great Catholic art to choose from you could find some photos that weren’t too terribly expensive.
Anyway, that’s my brilliant idea for the day. Just thought I’d share. Because in the world of blogging, you never know who’s reading.
It may sounds crazy, but I’ve had excellent success with an x-acto knife (very fine blade, the one that comes to a point). I slide it in under the splinter, and press the splinter up against the fingernail and slide it out. You have to use as little pressure as possible to avoid breaking the splinter and leaving a piece of it embedded. I’ve used it on wood and metal splinters with no problems.
Ouch. I’d take it to the doctor. They’d take it out in a minute. You don’t want to get an infection. I remember many days of packing and unpacking with little ones. It isn’t easy.
You could soak the hand in warm water and epsom salts. This sometimes helps to get a splinter to work its way out. I have used a needle and a similar method as the x-acto knife method described above. If you don’t get it out in the next day or so, you may want to call the doctor.
Oooh. Sorry to hear about that.
I had the same injury in grade school. Sr. Noel, the principal, took it out with a needle (sterilized in her devotional candle) pretty much the same way as the x-acto blade was mentioned aboove. Be sure to slather the area in some neosporin or something similar—an infection will hurt like the dickins, worse than the splinter itself…
Hope you get some relief soon.
And…isn’t it amazing, the gymnastic feats we mothers accomplish?
I think you should go to the doctor. You really don’t want to get an infection by trying to dig this out yourself. I fell a couple of years ago on some black ice and bruised my knee, but I must have somehow hit my thumb when I hit the pavement. The thing swelled up to twice its size. I went to the doctor and he drained it and I had to take antibiotics for a week. You would be surprised at how much a little infected finger can hurt!
I had the same kind of splinter a few months back. I let it go for a day or two, hoping it would work it’s way out. I did eventually manage it, but would have gone to the dr. if I hadn’t gotten it out. It was really irritating! I hope it’s out now, and I hope you’ll enjoy getting settled in your new home!