Marbles

I was not the kind of kid to put things up my nose or in my mouth. My children must have these tendencies from their father. Or perhaps this is some kind of ritual that needs to be performed before one turns three. For our family it all began about 10 1/2 years ago...

On a family drive, Elizabeth started crying in the back seat. I turned around to find her nose bleeding profusely. I became concerned when I noticed that one of her pony tail holders was missing. I asked her where it had gone and she pointed to her bloody nose. We stopped the car, laid her down, and looked with a flashlight up her nose. No luck. We ended up at the closest ER. After several attempts the elastic was recovered.

Noah did a "magic" trick with marbles. He would put one up his nose and say, "See it's gone." Then he would snort it out and say, "See, now its back." This trick did not impress me nor was it approved of and so he sought out his best friend for approval and applause. He secretly performed his trick for Elizabeth using two marbles in one nostril. Yep, the first one in got stuck. I tried blowing as hard as I could over his mouth to dislodge the marble with no success. After a trip to the DR, and then the ER, and then the Childrens Hospital, it was finally freed.

When Emma tried her version of the marble trick, I took her immediately to the childrens hospital.

Tessa must have more of my genes because so far we haven't had an incident.

Today, Nathan put a marble in his mouth. He started to panic, but couldn't talk to tell anyone about what was happening. Luckily, Emma saw and identified the problem quickly. She screamed. Ray went to get after her about screaming, and saw the reason for her screaming, and ran to help Nathan. He picked him up and shook him upside down, dislodging the marble and sending it flying down the stairs.

Hopefully, this counts as his magic trick and we can bypass any nose incidents.