Have you seen that e-mail going around about the way to remove things caught up in your kids’ noses? I think it was originally sent to me via my twins group – which was then followed by a group replys of – “Hey, we had that happen, too!” and “Ohmygod, that is the coolest home remedy ever!”

It’s as simple as closing your little rascal’s mouth completely, airtight, and then blowing gently into the one nostril that DOES NOT have the alien object imbedded in it. A little blow and – poot! – the offending item flies out of the clogged nostril.

When I saw this e-mail come through, I was in the later group: the, “Wow, what a totally cool thing to know as a mom.” The avoidance of speeding down Sir Frances Drake to Marin General Hospital with a large pea up the schnooz is right up there with flying across country with three kids under age four. Both as high in the fear/terror/I can’t-believe-I’m-in-this-situation level of the parental horror-story scale as you can get! Both worth avoiding like the plague (or today’s Bird Flu), so I burned this e-mail tidbit into my memory with hopes I’d never have to use it.

And then, I clicked the delete e-mail button and forgot about it.

Today, during lunch, one of my two and a half-year-old twin girls – the one who likes to lick sunscreen from the tube like yogurt and swipe Chapstick from my bedside table and smear it over and over and over her lips – was fiddling with her pasta. Elbow macaroni, to be precise, with a delicate, yet slick, sheen of olive oil that made it slither around in her dexterous digits.

Yes, it was the perfect, alluring treasure to subtly squish up her nose. And though she’d been busted “pretending” to do it with a loud, and clearly completely ineffective reprimand, “Not in your nose, sweetie, it’ll give you an owie,” she subtly, deftly stuffs it into her left nostril without this eagle-eyed mommy catching a glimpse.

Two hours later, she’s having a rough put-down for a nap. Whining, complaining, stripping off her clothes, goofing, throwing, and finally just plain yelling.

I go in and calm her. As I snuggle her back into her jammies and pink cotton sack, I notice a gleaming, whitish booger peeking out of her nose.

Taking my pinky fingernail and thumb, I am able to slowly, efficiently extract a ½ inch noodle out of her nose. Noodle??????!!! The look of surprise on her face probably matched the horror of surprise I felt. NOODLE!!!????????

So I didn’t need the “coolest way ever to extract an object from a nose” that the mass e-mail had promised. But, I also didn’t need a trip to the overloaded Marin General’s ER. I just needed me, a mom of three, who’s just about seen it all: ‘cept today’s lunch up my kid’s nose. Go figure.

By Annie Yearout

Labels: Annie Yearout

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