Sucking Out the Feeling

If you’ve been checking my Flickr account, you’ve probably noticed that Dash has found his nose.

This is fine, though asking him to please stop digging in his nose like it’s sheltering a valuable treasure has already become tiresome. I can honestly say that if he was just picking his nose, I wouldn’t really mind. It’s the fact that he’s pulling out gargantuan sized boogers and eating them that drives me insane.

The other day, he soaked in a bubble bath for a good 45 minutes after an intense playground session. The steam from the tub drained his head clean, and when he got out, he had a long snot stream stationed precariously on the top of his upper lip. Quickly, I darted over to the toilet paper roll and grabbed some back up. As I turned back to my son, I watched in horror as he simply sucked the snot right out of his nose like a human nasal aspirator. I sat helpless as snot was vacuumed out of my child’s head by his own mouth, listening to the psfssssip of the goo as it left his sinuses.

It was like watching your child take a fall off a toy, or in my case, like watching him jump fearlessly off the back of the couch into the hutch with no concept whatsoever of how much the landing is going to hurt. Time slows down and all you can do is watch in horror. And so I watched in horror, choking back bile, as my son happily sucked his own snot out of his nose and swallowed it.

“All gone!” He proudly wiped his hands clean as if they had some part in his nasal excavation.

I looked at the wad of toilet paper in my hands for a second, feeling sorry for its uselessness. “Here,” I said, handing it to him. “Wipe off your nose.”

He looked at me curiously, probably wondering what exactly my problem was. Can’t she see I’ve already solved the problem? Like an OCD mom in a overrun day care center, I wiped his face and brushed his teeth and procured a real aspirator to remove what might be left (not much) in there. Realizing (slowly) that a) kids eat boogers, it’s a fact of life and b) it’s too late lady, let it go, I got up and got him his pajamas.

It’s not that big of a deal, I told myself as I paired some socks. Sure, I think it’s gross but I’m sure I ate some boogers when I was little and I turned out fine. Besides, it’s not nearly as gross as some of the things he’s done. As I searched for the Spongebob underwear he prefers to sleep in, I smiled knowing that my son had survived much more in terms of bile-invoking activities. He’s smeared shit on the walls, and “cleaned” it out from under his fingernails by eating it, I’ve watched in horror as he’s shoved handfuls of sand into his mouth, and I have calmly set him in a warm tub after realizing the pool of “water” he’s been splashing in on the kitchen floor is his own urine. Shit happens, after all. Kids do gross things because they don’t know any better. I can’t stop him from ever doing gross things. He’s a boy. My job is to clean it up.

Resolved and prepared to hold myself to this new standard of calm, I walked back into the bathroom where I had left Dash to finish brushing his teeth. I smiled as I realized my son was on his tip-toes on his step-stool, smiling and talking to himself in the mirror. How can you possibly think this kid is gross, woman?, I asked myself as I picked up his towel.

Curious as to what he was telling himself, I halted my inner dialogue and focused on his face in the mirror to listen. On the mirror were several boogers, stationed in such a way that they represented a rhombus of some sort. Dash was smiling and reaching as high as he could to inch one closer to another. More boogers? Where are they coming from? Does he have a stash?

“Circle time, circle time, …indecipherable… and then I eat them!”

My child is disgusting.

lol…I probably shouldn’t laugh, but if it makes you feel better, my daughter is grosser, which really was a turn up for the books.

Its a phase, really - having been there with BOTH of mine, I assure you that boogers only have nutritional value when its garuanteed to make mothers and fathers squirm.
Like at weddings….or when you’re waving a camera around.

ROTFL!!!

From now on I’m going to check your blog AFTER my snack time.

O M G!

When he started picking his nose I told Nate that he should pick his butt and eat that too while he was at it because they were equal gross-ness. He did quit pretty soon after that.

yeah, that’s pretty foul. but he’s a boy, and that’s what boys do.

My son does the same thing, but to make it worse when he puts the booger in his mouth, he makes a chomping sound and then goes “Mmmmmmmmmm”. Take comfort in the fact that there was a study that came out not too long back that said eating your boogers would help to increase one’s immune system.

Oh, yes, I am on my second booger picking son, now. And my second son, well, let’s just say he took a step further…he eats them, as well. Oh, it’s disgusting. My mother crumples her face in disgust and I say, “Well, it’s better going back in where it came from then going on my sofa, or my walls, or ME!”

I love it!

I keep getting told that this is just a normal boy thing but I was so not ready for the grossness of it all. *sigh* nice to know I’m not the only one trying to survive the booger eating years.

Yolanda:

It’s disgusting, but I still laugh and smile anyway. Ick.

This post was very well written, in fact I couldn’t read the whole thing because I was kind of throwing up in my mouth a little.
Don’t worry, God will pay me back.