A Crazy Little Thing Called... Peas???

Ahhh, peas. A healthful vegetable (well, considered a vegetable, it's from the pod of a legume and botanically a fruit). Nonetheless, it's little, round squishy goodness. I'm sure my daughter thinks so. She likes peas... to her grandfathers dismay, for he does NOT like peas.

So, this evening for dinner, we had some healthy burritos. Baby blue (Aliyah, she has blue eyes) likes to eat her burrito sans the tortilla, so she had burrito insides for dinner and also, yes, you guessed it... peas! As we were finishing our plates, my husband and I got caught up in... conversation... just conversation ;-) Baby blue likes to amuse herself and sometimes at the expense of her food. This evening she did that very well. I looked over and what I saw prompted me to say, "Honey, we don't pick our nose, No thank you." At the same time my husband looked over and what he saw prompted him to say, "Take the peas out of your nose, please!" I laughed. What?? I didn't think she had peas in her nose, I just thought she found something else up there that was amusing her at the moment... but it seems that she PUT something up there to amuse herself. Was my husband really more observant of that fact?? I guess so, because as I stepped over to her chair to find out what was going on (because, really I didn't believe him), I found a pea up her nostril and it looked like she was digging at it.

Ok, the rest of the story is only for those who are not faint of heart and want to know all the gross, gory details...

So I knew that my finger wouldn't get it out, it would probably just push it up there further, so I squeezed at the top (bridge) of her nose hoping to squeeze it out. Well, I did squeeze something, because the part of the pea that was showing popped and pea innards splashed out! Ewwww, yes, that was my reaction, "EWWWW!" I will say that it worked out fine though because I was now able to grab the pea skin with my nails and successfully pulled it out!! Yay, I was the hero!!!

Or so I thought...

This part of the story gets a little fuzzy... I don't actually remember what made me check her other nostril, because on first glance I thought there was only one pea in one nostril. But whatever made me check was a good thing, because there was one lonely, lost pea lodged quite far up baby blue's nasal cavity. My first thought was tweasers, but I knew I couldn't get it up her small nostril... hmmm... what to do. She kept wanting to pick at it, but it was pushing it farther up. So, my husband ran upstairs to grab our suction bulb (you know that little thing to clean out baby's noses). We were hoping that since it would suck out snot and buggers, it might just work on a pea! Up until this time, baby blue had been happily the center of attention, but for some reason didn't like how the evening was turning when we held her down in what looked to be an attempt at surgery.
Needless to say, the suction bulb failed us miserably and I'm pretty sure the pea was even further away from rescue, at this point it was barely visible... even when you got baby blue laid down and peered straight up her nose.

I decided to call her doctor. (Oh, on a side note, I have actually been laughing almost this whole time at the situation, which wasn't as funny to my husband... especially when I picked up the phone to call the doctor... he really didn't want it to come to that.)

Anyway, I called the doc:
Me: "Hi, this is Aliyah's mom and I'm sorry to bug you on a Saturday evening, but Aliyah has a pea lodged pretty high up in her nose."
Doc: "Oh, no."
Me: Thinking; yeah that's why I'm calling you!
Me: "Do you have any ideas to get it out?"
Doc: "I'd be happy to meet you at the office, but I'm afraid I'm just stepping into an important dinner, if I had known an hour ago.... you'll probably have to take her to emergency... I'm sorry"
Me: Thinking; did he really say an hour ago? Does he really think that I just let my daughter run around for over an hour playing with a pea up her nose?!
Me: "Ok, no problem, I understand, thank you."

So, at this point I was laughing harder at the situation and the thought of us in the emergency room filling out paperwork for a toddler with a pea lodged in her nasal cavity.

Again, my husband wasn't fond of this thought... for two reasons. One being that he thought it would be embarrasing going to the emergency room for that, even though I reasurred him that it happens all the time. The second reason being that he didn't want to sit there for hours, since baby blue was a non-emergency, anyone that had a more serious issue would be admitted before her.

For the next several minutes we became cheerleaders for my daughters nose-blowing abilities. "Aliyah, blow your nose really hard! Come on, baby you can do it! Ok, good one, do it again! Yay, that's great. Keep blowing your nose!" Yes, that's what you would've heard if you stepped into our living room at that time. We knew if this didn't work we'd be walking into the hospital with our heads down in shame.
After about 5 minutes (what seemed to be days) of nose blowing, I felt something bounce onto my foot and roll under the couch. Was that it!! Was it the pea!! We looked around frantically like we'd just dropped a diamond in the middle of Times Square. Yes, we found the pea!!! What relief, (r-o-l-a-i-d-s!!, did that just come into your mind too?? I'm aging myself) sweet relief!!

Now, Aliyah is fine, tucked into bed and sleeping like a baby. (Where did the term, 'sleeping like a baby' come from though anyway? When baby blue was a baby, she didn't sleep all that well, and neither did I!!) All the peas are cleaned up, and I've vowed to watch her better when she's eating peas. We also had a nice, long discussion about NOT sticking objects up your nose!