The Pea.

Well, it's summer and the garden is in full swing.  I have been spending most of my nights with either a bucket of peas that need to be shelled and frozen, or boxes of strawberries that need to be hulled, and then turned into jam, or frozen. On Wednesday, I was attempting to do both these peas:

 

And turn these strawberries into jam: 

 

LL works later on Wednesdays, so it was just me and the kiddos.  They were being a little wild, chasing each other around, but they were happy and laughing and I was getting stuff done.

Until.

Collette walks into the kitchen and says very casually, "Mommy, can you get this pea out of my ear? I can't get it."

Attempting to count to 10 so I don't blow up at the child. Did she just say she put a PEA in her EAR?

So, I call her over to me and peer in her ear.  I don't see anything.  Grab a flash light.  Look again.  Lo and behold, there is a pea lodged so deeply in her ear that it is barely visible.

Have mercy.

After looking at it with the flashlight, I determined that my first and only line of defense, tweezers, weren't going to do the trick.  So I called LL to inform him of the situation, while Collette sat in time out.  (I mean, really, she did just shove a pea in her ear.)

Luckily  LL was close to home, so he took control of the situation and used a couple of  vet tools he carries in his car to try to dislodge the pea, but to no avail. 

By now Collette is super upset, traumatized, and her ear hurts. And I'd like to say that I was a model parent, but Trey was still running around crazy, it was stinkin' HOT in my kitchen from canning and not having air conditioning, and I had dumped a hot jar of strawberry jam all over the floor in the melee. I was totally frazzled and not very compassionate, I'm afraid.

But then I saw this little face:

And I just felt so bad for her.  We decided we needed to go to our local urgent care clinic that is open until 9:00pm and have a doctor extract it. So, Trey went to Grandma's, we went to the clinic, and waited to see the doctor.  It was pretty busy but the staff was super nice, first giving Collette crayons and a princess coloring page, and then giving her an ice pop (in her requested color of pink, of course) while she waited for the doctor.

Unfortunately, when the doctor came in, he was gruff, hurried, and not very interested in making a terrified three year old feel good about the procedure.  He asked us to hold her down and decided he was going to use forceps to get the pea out.  But, apparently Collette has super-human strength when she is scared and in pain, and both LL and I couldn't hold her still.  She was screaming and crying and trying to get away. It was really just heartbreaking. Instead of talking to her to calm her down, or calling for additional staff to help, the doctor (who hadn't even gotten the forceps close to ear) just gave up, saying, "Well, I'm not going to lacerate her ear trying to get it out.  You'll have to go to the ER and have her anesthetized." And walked out.

Well.  I was not pleased.  And LL, who is generally very patient, was even less pleased. He told me in no uncertain terms that we were not dragging our three year old to the ER at 10pm and she did NOT need anesthesia for a pea removal.  He would do it himself at his clinic the next morning.

So, Thursday morning we all went to work with Daddy.  One of his sweet coworkers helped hold Collette, and LL broke out this marvelous invention:

via

 

Alligator Forceps.

 

It took two tries, because Collette was still pretty worked up and wouldn't hold still the first time, so we gave her a break to calm down and check out the clinic animals. But, on the second attempt, LL was triumphant! (And for the record, the forceps that the doctor at the clinic tried to use were no where near long enough.  He never could have gotten it that way.)

 

Checking out the pea:

 

 

We celebrated our pea-free status by going to Dunkin Donuts, at Collette's request.  She wanted to go in and eat a sprinkle donut, so that's what we did.  She was still kinda traumatized by the experience, and wasn't quite her perky self, but she enjoyed herself and even made friends with the two cute little girls sitting near us. And I was in desperate need of an iced coffee. :)

 

A few minutes after we got back on the road to go home, I noticed it was very quiet.

 

 

They were both sound asleep! (Collette's new little friend wanted to see how long her hair was so she took it out of her pony tail to show her.  Hence the "Cousin It" look. Ha!)

 

Bless their hearts.  They were both worn out from the whole two-day ordeal!

 

Collette was so thankful to not have anything lodged in her ear and keeps telling LL, "Daddy, thank you so much for getting the pea out of my ear! I feel so much better!"

 

I asked her today why she put the pea in her ear in the first place.  She responded, matter-of-factly, "I wanted to see if it fit.  And it did."

 

Well.  Hard to argue with that logic, but hopefully we have all learned our lesson!

 

 

P.S.  The same time Collette was shoving a pea in her ear, her cousin Tabby was busy at her home cutting her own hair to give herself bangs! What is it with these girls?!? I'm hiding the scissors.