Since having my beautiful little Button-Pusher, I’ve become aware of a button that not only do I have, but I never knew existed: the ‘I need to wipe that snotty nose’ button. Honestly I never even knew this was a thing. That said, I always knew that seeing a toddler pass by in the street, who had two green caterpillars hanging from their nose, was a sight that made me want to vomit. But I had no idea that seeing my own child with a grubby nose, would turn me into some kind of heat seeking snot missile with a wet wipe. And it’s not that looking at it makes me want to hurl. Nothing about my child does that (which in itself is amazing: though unpleasant, and not something I want to experience everyday, I can and have coped with B-P’s poo on my hands. And I may once have said something along the lines of, it doesn’t smell that bad). So it’s not that seeing my gorgeous, smiley, curly haired girl with a grubby, green, crusty blocked nose makes me feel sick. I just think it looks gross! And I don’t want to look at it! So I’m pretty sure no one else wants to look at it either.
Mr Baffled thinks I’m mad and should just leave her nose alone. I tell him often that I worry she won’t be able to breathe properly. He tells me that’s a load of bull sh*t, that I know very well she can breathe just fine and that I just want to remove the snot from her nose. Just between you and I, he’s not wrong.
Regardless of this admission, I just don’t know how to stop myself regularly diving towards her with a tissue or wipe, declaring with a smile, that she needs to ‘blow like a fox’. * Invariably she turns her head away and matches my friendly declaration with an angry ‘noooo Mummy!’. She’ll even push my hand away and run away from me. It’s become a daily, somewhat futile, battle between us. In more rational moments I reason that it’s not a battle worth fighting. That it’s only snot, and that I’m giving my child a complex about having her face touched. I’ve even recently resorted to repeatedly singing Sing a Song of Sixpence so at the end the blackbird (i.e. me) can “peck off her nose”, and then we fall about laughing. Haha isn’t Mummy hilarious. All in a desperate attempt to create a new, positive association with my hand going towards her face. It appears to be working in that ‘pecking off her nose’ with a little squeeze is allowed. B-P’s not daft though: if she sees I’m holding a tissue she still runs for the hills…
As I sit here and type, I reason with myself that it’s rare you see an adult, or even an older child or teenager, with two great green caterpillars hanging from their nose, and in fairness to B-P, hers is seldom like this, it’s occasionally just a bit grubby. So perhaps in time, she’ll grow to dislike that feeling, and learn to wipe and blow her nose herself as she see fit. So maybe I just make like Elsa and ‘let it go’ for now?
Feel free to remind me I said that when I’m next chasing B-P around the house waving a wipe at her face!
* ‘blow like a fox’ is in reference to the wonderful Julia Donaldson story The Gruffalo. In the TV version, the fox sniffs with his pointy nose and this delights B-P every time she sees it happen. Even now if we read the book together, when we get to the part about the fox, she does a little sniff. I thought that this would help with nose blowing. I thought wrong.
Baffled & the Button-Pusher 