A missing arm...

I have to share what happened last Friday when I was giving R a sponge bath and changing his knit-rite shirt.  I got his old shirt off, washed him, and then I put on the new shirt.  As I was sliding it down in the back (it takes a lot of shifting and shimmying to get that shirt down because it's too tight for your fingers to go in), it got stuck.  I knew I had to get it on, so I just pulled and shimmy'ed harder.  I felt something give, and then it was able to slide down.  Guess what came out the bottom of his cast with his shirt?  An arm.  A mermaid (kind of like a Barbie-sized doll) arm.  So it had been stuck in between his back and the cast from anywhere up to 5 days.  I'm not really sure how long, I just know that the arm had been missing for about that long.

I kinda freaked out.  I mean, it's really tight back there, and that had to have hurt him.  R has been a little crankier than normal for a few days, but that was the only symptom that something was wrong.  However, he is a much happier boy since we got it out.  I was worried about pressure sores (from the arm).  We thought about taking him to the Dr, but they'd only be able to see if something was wrong if they took off the cast.  We really don't want to do that this early.  And he's still pretty happy, so we've decided to assume that he's ok.  I just wish I could look, and KNOW, you know?

I know that R puts things in his cast.  He's done it with a marble twice now, but it didn't slide down very far and he was screaming for it to come out.  Since it didn't slide down very far, I could just reach with a couple of fingers and get it out.  I thought he'd learned his lesson with the two marbles, but apparently not. :) I'm hoping he's learned his lesson now, as I am guessing it was him that put it in.
But needless to say, we've had a good talk with all of our kids about not putting things in R's cast, telling us if they see him put stuff in it, etc.

Now that's it's over, it's kinda funny.  I just hope he never does it again.