Bless You!

This afternoon I was indulging in a little blog-reading, getting good and intimidated by all the funnier-than-me writing going on in blogdom, when Grace decided to enter my office (the MOMMY ZONE) with a ginormous green sticky line from her right nostril to her upper lip.


Yummy.


No, really, she had a Skittle stuck up her nose. Her panic was real and although there was no blood, she was justified in breaching the unseen forcefield around my computer.

In addition to the difficulty created by only breathing through half her dinky baby nose, she was hyperventilating because she had already tried to remove the candy in secret by herself (the same way she got it out of the "secret" candy jar). This attempt was successful... if her goal was to put a Skittle so far up her nose as to lodge just millimeters from her brain.

I had the mommy calm going on, just long enough to comment on So, The Thing Is before duly freaking out like a good girl should.

Madeleine! Bring me the tweezers! Hurry!

No, Mommy, no teezers, P-eeze NO TEEZERS!

Tweezers were a big strike-out. Mostly because I was shaking badly and cursing the fact that it's a half-hour drive to town, where I was sure the doctor's office would be closed and we'd have to go to Urgent Care, otherwise known as the place one is least likely to get medical help within a decade of urgency.

By now the tears were flowing. And Gracie was pretty upset too.

Now, all three of our girls who are old enough to talk are old enough to be sassy and weird. But Grace is especially gifted in the goofball category. (It's at least a year before she can read "goofball," so fret not about me misshaping her baby self-esteem.) Note the picture below. Doesn't she look sweet? She only looks that way because she placed the Charlie Chaplin mustache-of-grass on her baby sister and then leaned in to the photo shoot.

Back to the Skittle. I had the genius (I know, MENSA qualification, right here) thought that sugar dissolves in warm water. My only little problem would be that Gracie hates water. Whenever we bathed her in our house in town I worried that a neighbor might call Child Protective Services. She screams bloody murder at the sound of the tub running.

It's even better when you have to pour the warm water approximately up her nose while instructing her to breathe through her (shrieking) mouth. If I could have recorded it, I would never have inflicted that sound on you, my dear three readers.

Madeleine and Sarah stood at the edge of the tub in wonder as I performed this extraction. Sarah was so shocked at the show that she didn't even find time to ask where Grace had found the candy. Madeleine was a true oldest child, organizing the chaos:

Here's a warm towel from the dryer, Mommy.

Pinch her other side of her nose shut so water doesn' t go up there too.

Will it rot away if you just leave it?

Finally, after a lot of gruesome green snot and sugar flowed, a pea-sized Skittle center shot out of her nose like an escaping convict.

Grace wanted to know if she could still eat it.