If the shoe fits...

Poor Jim. It seems like, more often than not, if something odd is going to happen with the girls, it happens when I'm at choir and he is home with them.

Tonight was no exception.

As he was helping Beta brush her teeth, he noticed her grabbing a bunch of toilet paper to wipe her nose. He asked her why she was doing that. "Because I have a shoe up my nose", she replies.

Say what?

"A shoe. Alpha did it first."

"ALPHA!", Jim says with authority in his voice. Alpha comes in the bathroom.

"Did you put a shoe up your nose?"

"yes" (eyes cast down)

"Did you tell Beta to put a shoe up her nose?"

"yes, but she took it out."

"No, I didn't," replies Beta.

A quick glance with a flashlight reveals the heel end of a tiny shoe from a Cinderella or Sleeping Beauty playset. Something like this.

About this time, I get home. Jim has Beta lying on her bed with a pair of tweezers and all the lights on. It becomes my job to hold Beta's hands down b/c she keeps trying to block the tweezers from touching her nose.

The tweezers aren't working.

Noooooo! We both think! Not the emergency room AGAIN! (We've been there twice in the past 3 months for Beta's asthma. I just paid the 2nd emergency room bill today. I don't want to have to pay a THIRD one!)

Luckily for us, Jim holds down one side of Beta's nose and tells her to blow. Out shoots a snot-covered pink shoe! I've never been so happy to see snot before!

We both breathe a sigh of relief! And then start trying to explain that we don't put tiny toys in our noses, ears, mouths, or ANY OTHER PLACE on our bodies!

I'm also afraid that we may have to take that Mattel recall seriously and take away their magnetic Polly Pocket toys. I haven't done it yet b/c they love those toys AND I figured my girls were old enough to know better, at 6 and 3. Apparently, they are not.

Jim's now working on his motorcycle. Let's hope it doesn't have any shoes up its nose.