First object up the nose!

After playing together all morning, I stepped away from Rosie for just a moment to get a little work done this afternoon. When I heard her crying, I went to investigate and found her covered in ink. Her entire mouth and nose were completely saturated with black ink, so I thought she had sucked on the marker and drawn on her face a bit. I scooped her up and carried her to the bathroom where I pointed out her face in the mirror. Rosie was enthralled with her black teeth, and we laughed about how silly she looked. But when it came time to clean off her face, she screamed every time I wiped her nose. As if I were watching an instant replay on tv, my mind flashed back to the original scene of the crime. I remembered seeing the marker next to her, but it was somehow missing the tip. I was increasingly horrified as I realized that the felt tip of the marker was still in her nose.

I collected my thoughts for a moment, before completely losing my head. I tried to get a good look up her nose but all I could see was a cascade of black ink. Her ink stained spit and snot was draining out of both sides of her nose and her mouth. I tried my best to pull out the tip, but my tweezers weren't wide enough to get a hold of it, and I was quite sure how aggressively I could try to get it out without hurting Rose. I plugged up the other side of her nose and asked her to blow, but it didn't do any good. I was now imagining the tip of the marker stuck millimeters from her brain like on the Simpsons, and struggling to keep my cool.

I decided to call the doctor, but could not find my phone anywhere. I then remembered watching Rosie toddle away with it earlier. After searching the house for the dumb phone and swearing to get a land line when all of this was over, I was soon left with no other option but to ask Rose what she did with it. I stared her in the face and repeated over and over as calmly as I could, "where is mommy's phone?!" She can usually find things, but not this time.

I ran to the computer, hoping that anyone was logged into chat and could call my phone. Luckily Genevieve was there, and received the most random IM from me, ever.
With the phone located (it was between the books on the bottom shelf downstairs) I called the doctor and whisked her down the street. Kris met us there and we proceeded to be completely embarrassed by her face full of ink.

When our normal pediatrician failed to pull out the marker tip, I felt a little better about myself. I had really tried to take care of this myself, for fear of being that crazy first time mom. Our Pediatrician went to grab the expert Puller-of-objects-out-of-children's-noses-er and he broke down laughing as soon as he caught sight of Rosie's face. He devised a plan that included a crazy hook tool and three of us to hold down the child. When he finally pulled the marker out of Rosie's nose, he asked if we wanted to keep it. Seriously.
Note: this picture was taken after trying to clean off her face twice.