Nosey girl

Two-year-old Hannah has a cute little nose.

You wouldn't think she could put anything of substance in it but she did — right in front of her mother.

She was sitting at the counter in grandma's house playing with whatever she could reach while I cut her an apple.

Not to be inhaled

Her mother and I were chatting when Hannah suddenly looked at Kari and made an odd little sound. "Mommy? Mom!" she said pitifully.

We looked at her and at the available sources of a problem. (With little kids, it can be anything!)

Near her was the vase that held my Mother's Day Cookies on sticks that had been stuck into a bowl of little pink balls.

Ever curious Hannah had apparently put one into her left nostril and sucked it up.

Now she had a little bump developing at the top of her nose and she didn't like the feeling.

Kari reached for the tweezers.

I reached for the car keys, sensing we were going to make a trip to the emergency room.

Sure enough, Hannah wasn't cooperative to the tweezer operation and we headed out.

"I'll try the doctor," I told Kari, thinking we could avoid the hefty cost of an emergency room visit.

I dialed. I explained the situation to the nurse who said she'd try to catch the doctor.

We arrived and waited with an alternatively crying and begging-to-be-anywhere-else child.

"Wanna go home. Don wanna see the doctor," Hannah said, pleading with her mother. "Wanna go home."

Kari tried to explain that she needed to sit still and wait for the doctor to help her but Hannah wasn't reassured.  She became more and more frantic. We tried to make her sneeze,  hoping she'd maybe just blow the little ball out.

Finally, we were ushered inside and the doctor summed up the problem.

"Yup, there it is," he said after looking at the similar pink ball I'd brought along as evidence. "Let me tell you what we're going to do…"

Thankfully the plan didn't involve any anesthesia or shots. It just meant Hannah had to be restrained by two nurses, her mother and the doctor as he fetched the ball.

Hannah's fine. Her mother and I will be all right and the doctor said this happens a lot.

He even told us a story about his neighbor who has several sons between the ages of 2-17. The neighbor called one night to see if the doctor could get a bean from his son's nose.

The doorbell rang. He grabbed his bag and opened the door to find the one with the bean up his nose was the 17-year-old!