She'll never forget this one

Mallory (who, yes, lost her top front tooth earlier this week) had an eventful night in the ER on Tuesday after she stuck a Smartie up her nose. Yes, a Smartie. We handed out little boxes of Valentine Smarties to her classmates and made the mistake of letting her have some of the leftovers. She was sitting on a stool in the kitchen, quietly eating, when out of the corner of my eye I saw her put the Smartie up her nose. "Did you just put a Smartie up your nose?" I asked, probably a bit too hysterically. "NO!" she said, and burst into tears, and the river of hot-pink snot that started coming out of her nostril proved that she was not being truthful (another matter for another day).

So off to the ER we went. Mallory was beside herself, because her last ER trip was when she had stitches in her forehead, and that was pretty traumatic all the way around. When we got to the hospital, the doctor could see the Smartie up her nose, but couldn't reach it. We tried giving her a mouth-to-mouth type treatment in the hopes that the air pressure would dislodge the Smartie, but no such luck. The doctor hemmed and hawed over giving a referral to an ear, nose and throat specialist, but finally just decided the Smartie would probably melt sooner or later, and sent us on our way. He did warn though that because the Smartie was so far up there, it wasn't going to come out her nose; it would likely melt down the back of her throat. So we won't see physical evidence if and when it does come out. We will, however, notice if it doesn't come out; if Mallory's breath starts to stink to high heaven then she likely has an infection because the Smartie is still there.

On our way out of the ER, we passed a huge vending machine, and Mallory paused lovingly in front of it. "Ooooooo, can I get something??" she asked, a hopeful glint in her eye. I probably gave her the most exasperated look of all time when I told her that after sticking her last bit of candy up her nose, she would be lucky if I ever let her have candy again.