Well, I am grateful and somewhat surprised that we are a week past the birth of our fourth child and I am just now writing my first post like this. Our middle two children (Benjamin is 5 and Rachel is 2) were riding quietly in the third row of our vehicle on the way home from the grocery store today, sharing some orange Tic Tacs our eldest had given Benjamin. Everything seemed to be going along swimmingly until we got home and unbuckled. I looked back, and in the shade of the car, it looked like Rachel had a bloody nose, but upon closer inspection, I realized the flow of liquid was orange.

Knowing my children, I immediately recognized what had happened, tilted her head back and was greeted by the sight of a bright orange capsule lodged about an inch or so into her sinus cavity. Through the next twenty minutes, I fought with the little booger (no pun intended), and it seemed like every time I got it down far enough to tweeze, she would cry and sniff it right back up. Thankfully, I had the peace of mind to realize that, even if I couldn’t get it out immediately, it would eventually dissolve, so I would just have her periodically blow her nose.

Finally, she blew it out, and you could see the immediate relief on her face. Once things had settled down, she very clearly informed us that “Bubba put candy in my nose.” When confronted with his sister’s claim, the noncommittal response went something like, “I don’t know. I might have, but I can’t remember!” Those of you with little boys understand that this is as good as a sworn confession, so we dealt with the problem and everyone is now down for a nap, adventures over for at least another hour.

Life as a parent is never boring, that’s for sure. While I’m not happy about what happened, it was a bit humorous as well, and I’m glad I thought to shoot this picture. The candy on the left is a new one out of the container while the one on the right is the remnant that was finally extracted from her nose. Hopefully we’ve all learned a lesson from this: only give children candy that is small enough to be easily blown out of their sinus cavities, or else too big to fit up there in the first place.