Candle Thomas and the Towel

When the weather was warm and the boys were wearing shorts while playing outside this past Spring and Summer, we ended up with quite a few skinned knees. Joshua would become particularly distraught at the sight of his own blood. One time I put a towel on his knee to soak up the blood, and every time he skinned his knee after that, he asked us to give him a towel cover his injury. A lot of times he would limp around bent over with his hand keeping a towel in place over the boo-boo on his knee. Ever since then, Joshua has considered the towel to be some sort of healing remedy, and almost always asks for one when he gets hurt.

Joshua became very attached to the Thomas the Train candle on his 3rd birthday cake, which, of course, is made of wax. In the days after his birthday, "Candle Thomas" never left his side. Later on that week he took it along when we went to visit some friends (who have a propensity to chew on toys), and Candle Thomas came home with quite a few boo-boos. Joshua was most distraught over Candle Thomas' injuries. They had chewed heavily on the "smoke" coming out of Thomas' funnel, disclosing the blue wax underneath the white smoke. When we got home, Joshua found a white colored ink pen (which of course did not write with white ink) and tried to use it to fix Candle Thomas' boo boos. He assumed that since the pen is white, it would have white ink. When that didn't work, he found a leaf and tried to use it to rub the boo boos away, but the leaf crumbled. Then he asked for a towel, so I gave him a small baby washcloth and he pressed it tenderly against Candle Thomas, saying "this will make it better, Candle Thomas. The towel will make it better".

I felt so sad for sweet, empathetic Joshua! To try get his mind off of this traumatic turn of events, as a treat I put on a Thomas DVD and he sat watching it, clutching Candle Thomas in the towel the entire time. Three weeks later, Candle Thomas is still wrapped in the same little washcloth. Whenever the washcloth becomes undone, Joshua becomes very concerned and asks me to wrap him back up. I just think it's so sweet that even at this young age, he shows such great empathy for others, even inanimate objects made of wax.