A Rosary Bead, Cali, and our $75 Emergency Room Field Trip. . .

Oh, my beautiful, curious, daring and keep-me-on-my-toes daughter, Cali. Mommy loves you. Your giggle and smile can light up a room. But you also have the ability to stop my heart in an instant with your adventurous nature!

Let me share with all of you the fun day we had yesterday! We were gearing up for our week ahead learning even more about China (we had a two week unit earlier in the year that the girls loved) and about the Olympics. We were getting ready for the Saints opening game last night against the Cardinals. It was a good day :-) Then, for whatever reason, I felt led to look up my youngest daughter's nose. I don't know why I felt this desire, but for whatever reason I proceeded to put said child on my lap, tilt her head back and look up. And to my utter surprise, I saw. . . something.

"Cali, what is that in your nose? Did you put something up your nose, baby?"

"Uh huh."

"You DID?!? What is it?"

"(gibberish)" Now I can normally decipher my beautiful two year old's speech with no problem, but as luck would have it, that was not the case this time.

PANIC!

I pick up said daughter and lay her down onto the kitchen counter and get a closer look. It looked like a holly from a Christmas ornament but that couldn't be because we don't have any decorations up (while I was really late in picking them up, luckily they have long been put away by this point). I tried grabbing it with my fingers but that appeared to push it further in, so I immediately stopped. I called my mom and she recommended those bulb syringes. Tried it -- Nothing! My father was outside in his yard so he came over to try to help and we tried tweezers -- with her little bitty nose we saw that whatever we did, it would end up pushing it further back, so I called Daddy and loaded the girls in the car and started the drive to the Emergency Room.

Oh the joys of parenting, huh? Cali fell asleep on the drive to the hospital and stayed that way for the majority of the visit, luckily :-) I should say that she was not in pain or uncomfortable at all during this process - the only way I knew there was something up there was because I happened to look! They got us back pretty quickly and the doctor used his nifty tool and had it out in a matter of SECONDS. What was the object she shoved up her nose?? We were all sure it was a crayon, possibly a broken Mardi Gras bead. . . but no. My daughter had found a rosary my grandfather had brought me back from the Vatican during a recent trip to Italy and was playing with it a few days ago. Upon getting it back from her, I noticed that she had broken it but it looked like two beads had simply gotten unattached and I just put it up to fix later. If I would have looked closer at it, I would have figured this out much sooner, I am sure. Although we go to a Methodist congregation now, YEARS of saying the rosary would have led me to realize that a bead was missing from one of the decades, but I did not, so here we are two days and a $75 copay later with a bead stuck in my daughter's nose. FUN!

We did give one of the doctors a laugh, though. When we were waiting in one room getting our information put into the computer, Jordan looked around and asked, "Is this a baby hospital?" I told her it was where babies are born, in fact it was the same hospital that Cali was born in. She then asked if we could see the babies, and I told her that if they were good, that we would take them to the nursery after they got the THING out of Cali's nose. That made Jordan smile, and then she asked:

"Will we see the alligator?"

"Um, WHAT?"

"The baby alligator and baby Cinnamon."

Luckily I enjoy Noggin as well, so I knew she was referring to an episode of Blues Clues where Mr. Salt and Ms. Pepper had baby Cinnamon at the Baby Hospital. All the characters visited the baby and saw the other babies that included a variety of animals and condiments lol. So, I then had to explain to Jordan, much to the amusement of the doctor in the room, that we would NOT be seeing any condiments, spices or animals in the nursery upstairs!

She was still excited, though and it was great motivation to listen and not touch anything in the room they brought us to that was FILLED with fun looking gadgets. So after everything was done, we drove around to the front of the hospital, rode the elevator up to the nursery and excitedly looked through the windows and saw. . . a TON of empty beds! Yep! Were no women having babies yesterday????

I was so proud of the girls, though. They were disappointed but handled it beautifully. They walked out and we had fun on the elevator ride and told them that we would come back soon, and that satisfied them, thank goodness!

So that was our fun field trip to the Emergency Room and Hospital, and our story about Cali and her Rosary Bead.

Have a wonderful weekend!!!