Play Dough

Isabella was always intrigued by the idea of sticking objects up her nose. I had heard horror stories of kids sticking beans up their noses and having them sprout and other similar tales, so I was always very paranoid whenever she got anything close to her face. She had made several attempts at shoving items up her nostrils, but I always caught her and thwarted her plans before they actually made it up.

One day, Cody, Isabella, and I were sitting at the kitchen table playing a game. Isabella got bored of the game before Cody did, so I gave her a little bit of play dough to play with while we sat there. She was perfectly content for several minutes, and I didn’t pay a lot of attention to what she was doing until she suddenly shouted, “MOM! I have play dough up my nose!”

I looked up her nose and didn’t see anything so I said, “No, I don’t think you have anything up there Bellie.”

“YES I DO!” She replied in a panicked tone.

I told Cody to run upstairs and get his little flashlight. He came running back down, flashlight in hand, and I used it to see if I could spot anything farther up. Sure enough, there was a rather large piece of light purple play dough lodged in Isabella’s right nostril.

I wasn’t sure what to do at this point, so I grabbed a tissue and told her to blow. The problem was that whenever she blew her nose, she would make the blowing sound, but she was actually sucking air in through her nose, rather than out. After a few attempts with the tissue, I realized that it was very possible that she was sucking the play dough farther and farther back and making the problem worse.

I didn’t want to stick anything up there because I was afraid of pushing it farther up her nose myself. I called my sister, because I thought I remembered a nose incident she had with my little niece a couple of years before. Her advice was to call the doctor.

The second Isabella heard the word “doctor” the hysteria began. She begged me not to call the doctor and assured me over and over that she was NOT sick. Bell had always been terrified of doctors. Even when we took her with us to Cody’s doctor appointments, she would scream the entire time while Cody was happily being poked and prodded.

I called the doctor and set up an appointment. After I hung up, I called Kasey at work to see what he thought about it. Kasey usually has really good ideas, but not always. His first idea was a good one. He suggested that I get the “booger-getter-outer” as we had affectionately named it, and try sucking it out with that. The booger-getter-outer was the rubber bulb thing that is used to suck mucous out of babies noses. When that failed, he told me to try sucking the play dough out of her nose with the carpet vacuum.  Initially I thought he was joking, but he wasn’t.  I was convinced that there was not anyway a vacuum could suck play dough out of a two year old’s tiny little nose, but I decided that I would feel  really stupid if I spent all the time and effort to go to the doctor if the vacuum was all it took. 

I got the vacuum out, laid Bellie down, place the hose attachment right under her nose, plugged up the clear nostril, and turned it on. I’m not really sure how to describe the way her nostril got sucked onto the side of the vacuum hose, or the look of shock and disbelief on her face, but it was priceless. I tried twice more with no success.

I accepted the fact that we were just going to have to let the doctor take care of it and made dinner for us to quickly eat before we went. As she was eating her chicken nuggets, Isabella leaned over the side of her high chair and blew her nose. I looked down and saw a ball of play dough, mixed with some other slimy substances, sliding down the side of her seat.

“I blew it out!” Bell proudly announced. I grabbed the flashlight to see if it was all gone. Her nostril was clear. I called the doctor and cancelled the appointment.