Lilah and the bell

My friend Danielle and I recently added another technical skill to our repertoire: bell-retrieval.

Like most toddlers, Danielle's little girl is fun and active, and has a never-ending supply of curiosity. And while curiosity has traditionally been linked to death among felines, when it comes to matters of a 3-year-old named Lilah, curiosity stuck a bell up its nose.

During a recent morning of gabbing over coffee and providing our expert unsolicited criticism of top reality shows, Lilah was doing what toddlers do best: singing, dancing, and mimicking the moves of the dancers with her dolls and stuffed animals. In the middle of this seemingly perfect interlude, the two of us started to cackle over the musings delivered by a particularly memorable judge when all of a sudden Miss Lilah turned around in a full-on panic.

Her mother, clearly in tune with her child and her screams, zoned in immediately. A bell from some kind of Christmas decoration had gone rogue, and as she entered into a general inquisition on the object, the toddler had inserted it in her right nostril. Once I realized what had happened, in as probably as much panic as the child was in, I bounded upstairs for a set of tweezers.

Calmly, Danielle saddled her wailing toddler on her hip and headed for her bedroom. As she called out, "I need my Anlee (the Lilah-abbreviated version of Auntie Emily)," I knew that I should strive to calm her down instead. While Danielle attempted to manually pull the object out, I rubbed her stomach, and then offered up my hand for her to squeeze as hard as she'd like. But it was apparent that simply seeing the device getting closer and closer to her face was enough to incite the panic once again. Thinking back to when I was younger, and both my mother and aunt would have to put me in a headlock to even blow my nose, I decided to channel the ladies in my family. I held my finger on the opposite nostril and her mother and I instructed her to blow.

"BLOW, BLOW, BLOW...YES! YES! YES! Owwwww.....gaaaaaaaaawwwwddd."

By the third blow, the tiny toddler had blown the bell out of her nose (brace yourself for the disgusting) in a gigantic - and I mean gigantic - snot rocket. In the middle of our celebratory cheers that we didn't have to go to the hospital and that the bell was indeed out of her nose, my emotions quickly went for a drive when I saw the 6-inch snot.

Nope. Nope. Nope.

As I exited the room as quickly as possible, I yelled back, "We're good here, right?"