I forgot and put it in my nose

Up until this point, we’ve been very fortunate with Ethan. He was never a “put it in my mouth” baby, and he stayed out of places we told him to. Our entire effort at baby proofing was limited to rubber bands on the kitchen cabinets. We never bothered to install the cabinet locks after we discovered that he wouldn’t open the cabinets with bands, even though he was capable of getting them open.

Suddenly, some instinct has been awakened in him, and everything goes in his mouth or, as of last night, his nose.

I was finishing up dinner preparations and had sent Ethan out to make sure we had napkins on the table in the dining room. Suddenly he came into the kitchen crying “I forgot and I put it in my nose,” … only I couldn’t understand more than the “I forgot” part.

As he was starting to put his finger in his nose, it dawned on my what he’d been saying. So, to add insult to injury (in his mind at least), I lunged across the floor and grabbed his finger before it could push whatever was in there farther up his nose.

He had taken one of his small polished rocks and put it in his nostril (I don’t know what part of that action constituted “forgetting”). Fortunately, he came into the kitchen immediately, and I was able to catch the first exploratory finger poke before it sent the offending rock further into his head.

Since the rock was still in his nostril, I was able to push it back out and avoid a trip to the ER for expert rock removal (and therefore deprived some poor ER doc of a funny story to tell after his or her shift that night).

Of course, as I was working the stone out of Ethan’s nostril, every funny “kid shoved a [fill in the blank] up his/her nose and went to the ER” story I ever heard ran through my head, and I was having a hard time suppressing my laughter. Humor can be so inappropriate some times.

But now I shall be living in fear of the next incident in which Ethan “forgets.” Am I, as we’re approaching his fifth birthday, suddenly going to have to babyproof the house? Do I have to learn new behaviors and train myself to be aware of where I'm setting small items around the house? I’m not sure I have the mental capacity to do that.

Oh well, all’s well that ends well.