I never, not once, thought Katherine would be the first one to do it. I'd heard stories about childhood playmates that had to make special Dr. visits because of it, and I pretty much summed up, It'll be the boy, first. Most likely not her at all.
I was wrong.
On the way home from lunch today, a usually happy and talkative 4-year-old started shrieking from the back seat. One second she's babbling on about who knows what and the next second she's screaming, with shear terror in her eyes.
I turned around quickly, did the "mom stretch" from the front seat with my seat belt on and demanded to know, "What is wrong? What happened? Are you okay? What hurts?"
Her eyes were overflowing with tears and she kept pointing to her nose exclaiming, "My nose! Ouchie, it hurts! My nose!"
"What's wrong with your nose?"
"It's stuck up in there!"
"What is?"
inaudible
"Where?"
(she points to her right nostril)
By this point, I have no idea what it is, but it's scaring her to death, which is starting to scare me, and it must come out quickly.
"OK, sweet pea. I'm going to press this side of your nose and hold it tight. I want you to take a deep breath through your mouth and blow out the other side really hard. OK? Like this!" (I modeled the actions so as to make sure she didn't suck it up any further)
(she nodded eagerly)
"OK, I'm pressing this side, take a deep breath and BLOW!"
Out projected a flimsy piece of clear tape, the size of a rice krispie kernel.
She had been playing with her brother's truck book, which has been patched and taped together many times because of his destructive nature, and for some reason unknown to any mother that has ever lived --> she decided to shove a small piece of the clear packing tape up her nose.
After a hardy laugh with her father, I explained to her why we don't do that and I happened to have a true story to back up my motherly wisdom.
A boy I grew up with stuck a bean up his nose when he was little. I don't know what kind of bean or how little he was, but something tells me he was big enough to know better and nearly drive his mother insane. He stuck it up his nose and didn't tell anybody. I guess it didn't bother him that much because it stayed up there until it started smelling. Now remember, his mother had no clue the bean had already settled in its new home. It seems like it, although I might be embellishing a tad, but it seems like it took a couple of days for his mom to figure out what was smelling.
OK, so I got a visual with this one. The bean was up there long enough for it to start smelling, and then mom can't figure out what the smell is for another couple of days. I swear. I can so see myself catching a slight whiff of something not so fresh as I played with one of my kids, or gave them a bath or helped them get dressed and I shutter to think it would take days to figure it out. She eventually had to take him to the doctor. True story. I think the exaggerated length of the tweezers-like contraption used to get the bean out of his nose might be the hook in the story I used for Katherine to not try that again.
This is a PERFECT example of why Mothers temporarily lose their brains. Can you imagine the brain power sucked up by subconsciously trying to figure out for DAYS what was causing the smell emanating from your small child?
I'm convinced more and more every day that Motherhood is God's precious little reminder that we are not in control, we never have been no matter how "with-it" we were before kids, we never will be and there's joy in letting Him take the wheel. Because frankly, anything shoved up a kid's nose, after the coast is clear and no one is hurt, is funny.
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