Well, being a person who likes to eat but not being a real genius when it comes to "storing" that food long-term (I like to think of myself of a real immediate, short-term, "give it to me now and yes, add the whipped cream" kind of gal), I'm always on the look out for new techniques...and I daresay my charming, sweet 16-month old daughter has developed one. It all started in the carpool on the way to preschool a few days ago. C. (one of our "carpool" buddies) pointed out that H. was sitting ever so serenely, looking out the window with one of her fingers jammed half-way up her nose. She wasn't picking, wasn't moving the finger around, just sitting with her finger resting all the way up her naval cavity. I tried to ignore it recognizing that ANY comment would be positive reinforcement to my daughter and feed the already disgusting conversation going on with the 5 year olds in the backseat but I have to admit it was a little disturbing to see my girl in such a socially awkward position.

Fast forward to the day she had a series of sneezing attacks...I thought she was having violent allergies to something. She seriously would start sneezing and it would be 6-7 good, hard sneezes before she would stop. I rushed to the store and stocked up on Benadryl to arm myself with the necessary tools but started to notice that each time she had a hard attack, she would blow some contents of her nose out and not all of it looked "normal" to me. (Being the expert on children's nasal matter that I am...) I mentioned it to my husband but since he has bad allergies, we opted for doping her up, sending her to bed and praying it would all magically disappear before morning.

Then came the morning we caught her shoving small chunks of banana up her nose. I watched her carefully pick up a piece of slimy banana, place it delicately at the base of the nose opening, and then approach it with small, quick jabs of the pointer finger. She didn't just jam it up there...she shot it into her brain. (And because I suffer from a serious case of motherhood anxiety, I just had to ask my husband if children could be brain damaged from stuffing foreign substance into their heads. Don't think I didn't look it up on the internet that night!) We immediately moved into action. Out came the plastic, blue "booger" grabber-sucker thing, the tweezers, the nasal spray, and the chocolates (for moral support). We sucked, we lubricated, we tweezed, we begged, prayed, pleaded and cajoled and were finally rewarded with a sneeze that sent that chunk out of her nose and across the room. So of course we moved to scientist mode where we picked it up with a tissue and studied it carefully with a certain sense of awe and wonder.

That was almost 2 weeks ago. Since then we have accumulated more banana chunks, a piece of sausage, a felt pad from the bottom of a chair, part of a crayon, lots of small wads of toliet paper, and a variety of vegetables. The pea that she jammed into her nose on Monday actually had to be removed by the doctor who brought out the "big guns" for the procedure. You ain't seen a "sucking machine" until you've gone to the pediatric ear/nose/throat specialist! Anyway, she screamed like she always does but our doctor was kind enough to wrap the pea in a piece of gauze so we could take it home and marvel over it for a little while.

So now we bring it full circle. I think H. is just stashing her food storage away in what she considers a lovely, dark, cool hole. Really it would be the ideal place if it weren't so totally inappropriate.

Lovely, naughty, darling little girl!