So I was all set to do my snowman pictorial for today, when I heard howling from the other room.  My husband, E,  and I ran in to find my older daughter with a peanut lodged in her nose.   Hubby quite deftly removed it immediately.  However, upon further exploration, we discovered that there was another half a peanut blocking the view of her brain.  Since she has yet to master the skill of blowing her nose (she still sucks air in when she tries), I held her still while E made a couple of attempts with the tweezers.  Not making any progress (and being deathly afraid of making it worse by inadvertently shoving the peanut further into her sinus cavity), we decided it was time to hit the emergency room.  She got very upset when she found out just how serious her situation was.  E stayed with our youngest while I held my daughter's hand as I drove as fast as I could safely go across town.  
    When we arrived I told the receptionist what she had done.  By this point I had gotten my daughter to calm down, but she began to cry a little as I said she had shoved a peanut up her nose.  She tearfully added, "By accident!" and I knew that she was embarrassed, like I was airing our dirty laundry to a stranger.  I made sure she knew that the lady certainly did not think she had gotten the peanut stuck in her nostril on purpose.
    So we sat down to wait for what would be the longest 45 minutes or so I have experienced in a while.  She was so brave as I rocked her and sang songs quietly.  Only occasionally would she cry softly because by this time it was really beginning to hurt.  We had one woman in a wheelchair ahead of us, so I hoped it wouldn't be long.  After 20 minutes or so a group of three people came in:  a woman in her mid- to late-40s and her parents.  About five minutes later, the woman's mother announced, "It's been too long!"  Her husband joined me in looking at her like she was crazy as he told her, "Apparently you haven't spent much time in emergency rooms.  This is nothing!"  The daughter nodded in agreement and said, "We're going to be here for a while."  Then the old man went to sleep.
    After a little more time went by, my daughter asked me why we couldn't go into the room now.  Although I wanted to shout it so the complainer sitting next to me could hear, I quietly let her know that even though our situation seems very urgent to us, everyone else in here also had an urgent problem.  Therefore, it was very important for us to patiently wait for our turn-- the woman in the wheelchair got here first, so they have to call her back before we can go.
    When the woman in the wheelchair did go back, my daughter asked me why I thought she needed to see the doctor.  I suggested that the wheelchair may hint at a problem with walking, or maybe she was here for something entirely unrelated to that.  Heck, maybe she had a peanut stuck in her  nose!  My daughter latched onto this immediately and said that was definitely the reason she was there.  I laughed and asked if she thought the three others in the waiting room all had peanuts in their noses.  She was sure they did.  In fact, she had no doubt that every patient in that E.R. needed some sort of nut removed from their nostril!  
    Finally, I decided to address the elephant in the room:  "Um, Honey, why exactly did you put that peanut in your nose?"  She shrugged her shoulders.  "I just wanted to know if it would fit."  So we discussed specifics-- how our orifices are designed for specific things and to misuse them is to risk serious injury-- and generalities-- how experiments can be wonderfully educational, but it is nevertheless important to run ideas by an adult prior to commencing testing in order to avoid said injury.
    Then we were at last called back so our daughter could get the same speech (at least the orifice protection portion) from a very nice nurse who had recently gone through the same experience with her 4-year-old.  That's when she let me know that it was highly unlikely that they would be able to extract this wretched peanut and I would probably have to contact an Ear, Nose, and Throat Specialist in the morning.  I began to seriously panic-- there was no way I was going to take my eyes off my daughter for a second until this foreign object was no longer risking obstructing her breathing!  Tomorrow?  Look, I know her leg isn't falling off or anything, but you can't send me home without fixing what I came here for!  Luckily the doctor came in and felt very confident that he could get ahold of it.  When they laid her down I was able to see that the peanut had worked its way the right direction just enough.  Thank the Lord for small miracles, right?  The other small miracle was that the doctor didn't pussyfoot around.  He swooped right in with his creepy cotton-wrapped dental tool and popped that sucker right out in one shot!  It was over in seconds!  I should've just snagged him in the lobby, for goodness' sake!    
    Anyway, I got her back home and told her a story about my childhood curiosity involving a candle that ended up with my parent's carpet on fire.  Then my husband told her about the time he swallowed a penny.  Armed with the information that she was not the first child in the world to have their curiosity get the best of them,  she quite quickly got back to her normal self.  She interrupted my retelling of her bravery to E. to make an 'OK'-like symbol with her hand right in his face and shout, "CHICKEN NUGGET!" because, apparently, the hand gesture she was making was shaped like one.  Then I put her to bed and we said our prayers.  I thanked God for allowing her to not be hurt and to help her to remember not to put anything else where it didn't belong.  She asked God to help me to remember not to set the carpet on fire, and to help Daddy not eat any more money.  Then, while she was on the subject of eating, she wanted to eat the Yeti because he is yummy.
    Yes, the Yeti.  The family symbol that all is well if you can tie it all back to the Yeti.  We did have pancakes this morning, after all.

CL