"Mom......Jennica's putting rocks in her ears."

There are just some phrases that a mother never wants to hear. This past weekend, our whole family was outside in the backyard and Tiersten came around the back of the garage, "Mom...Jennica is putting rocks in her ears." I immediately stopped what I was doing and let Tiersten lead the way back to Jennica so I could investigate.

Jennica was, in fact, cramming pea gravel into her ears. For the most part, they were falling right back out. Except for one tiny little piece that she had thoroughly wedged into her ear canal. Really special. Really friggin' special.

Mike and I quickly came to the conclusion that attempting to remove it on our own was only going to shove it further into her ear. So we shut down the rototiller and the lawn tractor, left Dane in charge of Grant and Tiersten with strict orders not to operate any machinery while we were gone, and packed Jennica off to the ER.

I think ER staff develops a certain sense that enables them to "read" parents and situations when they walk in the door. There are certain situations that require urgency and certain parents that demand it. And then there are parents that are obviously "frequent flyers" in the ER, and show up more exasperated than panicked. We definitely fell into the latter category on Saturday and the ER responded accordingly. Jennica was obviously not in any pain, and wasn't bleeding. In fact, she seemed to be quite delighted to be the center of everyone's attention without having to compete with her sibilings. The ER doctor on staff that day turned out to be our wonderful local surgeon, with whom we had been previously acquainted (he put 44 stitches in my leg about 6 years ago and he's operated on both of my parents), he's wonderful with kids, and he's way over-qualified to remove a small rock from a little girl's ear canal. With Mike and I helping to hold her still, he used an itty-bitty little tool and wiggled the rock out.

Now........this is the second trip that we've made with Jennica to the ER regarding a foreign object shoved into her ear. The last time was when Tiersten tried to turn her into "Sister Potato-head" (see previous post from a couple of years back). Hopefully, there won't be a third trip...

So we, the exasperated and "frequent flyer" parents, went home. We've had ANOTHER good chat with Jennica about how nothing is to be put into her ears and she nodded solemnly and did a good job of pretending to be listening. Whatever...........sigh.............