The Innovation Award

Since Olivia became fully potty trained we quit carrying a diaper bag. I was elated to pack those things up and have one less thing to strap on like a pack mule every morning. At this point, we really don’t even need a change of clothes for her because she’s great about telling us when she needs to go potty. If we do pack an extra shirt/pants/panties, we usually just leave them in the car just in case.

The downside to not having a diaper bag, as we discovered this morning in church, is that our diaper bag was like a MacGyver survival kit. We had wipes and creams for every ailment and toys and books and even batteries (weird, right?), and hand sanitizer, and well, you get the picture. No matter the situation, we had it covered.

Now when we go somewhere, we just bring Olivia’s little backpack stuffed with colors and coloring books and a few small toys. But it’s a small backpack, toddler sized, so you can’t fit much more than that in it.

So, as you all know, it’s cold season. And when you are in the midst of cold season, your kid becomes a snot faucet. We have ourselves a very runny snot faucet. Oh, who also happens to have just learned that she can blow her snot out of her nose instead of just sucking it back up into her sinus cavities. The great thing about this is that we no longer have to use those snot bulbs (best invention EVER by the way). The not-so-great thing is that toddlers (or maybe just my toddler?) think boogers are funny.

There we were in church this morning, enjoying the message while Olivia actually for the VERY FIRST TIME fully behaved herself when I heard my sweet angel blow her nose. Only I subconsciously knew this couldn’t be right because I hadn’t pulled out a tissue for her to do so and neither had Mike so I snapped to attention to find that Olivia had blown out of her nose quite possibly the largest “clump” of green snot I had ever seen. It dangled precariously out of her nose, getting longer by the millisecond, its tail end resting on her chin as the body of the snot clump rested comfortably on her lips.

I gasped “Oh my God!” Mike audibly yelled “AAAAAHHHHHH!” causing the young single guy in front of us to turn around and make a face that gave us every indication that he had thrown up in his mouth a little. We frantically reached for the diaper bag that was…NO LONGER WITH US! I searched in my purse for tissue, wadded up napkins, SOMETHING but to no avail. Mike hurriedly jumped up announcing he was going to get toilet paper from the bathroom as Olivia stuck out her tongue to get a taste of the snot clump.

Still, my eyes scanned the immediate vicinity for something, anything, I could use to rid ourselves of the ever lengthening snot clump. I knew that time was of the essence and Mike would never make it back with the toilet paper before the snot clump plopped onto the floor. And look, we aren’t above using our sleeves or our shirt tails but this snot clump was freaking disgusting. I mean, it was HUGE. And neon green. I mean, GROSS.

My eyes landed on the coloring book—AAAAAHHHHHAAA! I ripped a page out and victoriously grabbed the snot clump off of Olivia’s chin, crumpled up the paper, and shoved it in my purse. Yes, I felt proud of my innovative outside-of-the-box thinking. I knew my daughter would be happy that I rescued her face from the obscene grossness of the snot clump. Instead, she loudly announced “You tore my coloring book!” Eh, you win some, you lose some.

Later in the service when I heard The Boss Lady making those I’m-about-to-blow-my-nose-again noises, we were ready with the toilet paper Mike had seized from the bathroom. But rather than risk another page of her coloring book being ripped apart, my innovative daughter reached her finger in her nostril, pulled out a snot clump herself, and disposed of it in her mouth.