It happened. I knew it would eventually, I just didn't know when, or which child it would be. But Isaac took out the grand prize last night when he stuck a piece of lego up his nose. I'll repeat that in case you didn't quite get it the first time. Isaac stuck a piece of lego up his nose.

I realise it happens to every child or family at some time or another. Personally, I never felt the urge to see if some inanimate object would fit up my nostril. But my sister Tory stuck some foam up there which my mum had to pull out with tweezers - obviously a very delicate operation (especially with 3 sisters laughing hysterically in the background). It wasn't so bad in her case as the foam kind of softened the impact the tweezers could have made. And my oldest sister had to be taken to the doctor for a bead to be removed from her ear. Not that I remember that but it's one of the family stories that get brought up every now and again.

As far I as know, Paul never stuck anything up his nose, but he made up for it by eating things. Legend has it that he swallowed a coin or some such similar small item and when taken to the doctor for an x-ray the doctor was more concerned about all the other nuts and bolts they discovered already inside his stomach. And he reckons Jeremy gets his dirt-eating habits from my side of the family.

Anyway, so last night Isaac, for some reason only understood by other 3 year olds, decided to see if a piece of lego would fit up his nostril. Oh yes, it did fit. Then he tried to get it out all by himself, only suceeding to push it further up.

Our first knowledge of the incident was "mummy, please get it out". As Paul and I were busily building rockets and space shuttle's out of lego at the time, it took a few moments for us to realise what he meant. There was lego up his nose. After an initial consultation it was determined that although we could see the lego, we couldn't reach it and tweezers were way to risky for such a delicate part of the anatomy. We tried to get him to blow his nose, but hey, he's only 3 and hasn't got a great handle on that yet.

After a phone call to a paramedic friend for advice (because you never know, there may be a trick to removing lego from a 3 year old's nose that we hadn't come across before) we realised a visit to the hospital would be in order, most likely along with having to hold down a screaming child or even knocking him out in order to remove the lego. With little hope we held one side of his nose and advised him one last time to "blow big like a rocket taking off" and fortunately out flew the piece of lego. Jacob's comment was "wow Isaac that came out fast like a bullet".

He's fine now.

PS: I realise this is not a cute photo of my child. It was taken a few days after his hair cut, out bush on a day he got no sleep, filthy dirty from playing in the dust, and yes, his nose is running. I figure this photo will help illustrate the above story, and not every photo is cute, nice and "aaahhh". This is reality. This is a photo of a child that would stick lego up his nose.