The Feathered, Glittery, Pink Potty Tiara Day

My precious, blue-eyed, blondie of a three year old yells from the living room, " Mum. Mum.  I need your help p'ease."  Being as the tone was nonthreatening or panicy, I calmly reply from the kitchen, "Are you hurt, did you destroy something, or are you in danger?"  In her wee little voice she answers, "I'm just super frust-er-ated."  At this point I'm halfway into doing the dishes, by hand, and figure the situation could wait another moment... or three.  However, it wasn't but a few seconds later that I hear a loud BANG, followed by the dragging of an unidentified large object across the 130+ year old hardwood floors of our living room.  Out of the corner of my eye I see one of our yellow, hollow formed, plastic toddler chairs simultaneously being turned upside down and carried through the entrance of a hallway.  (By the way, it's a hand-me-down chair.  Yay for hand-me-downs!!!)  At this point she is starting to feel defeat.  She turns to me, drops the chair with a clamor, stamps her foot screaming, "It's stuck!  Get it out!"  Now curiosity is killing me; the dishes are instantly forgotten.

"Mum, I can't get it out so I can eat it."

Um, first that sounds serious.  Second, gross.  And third, what exactly is this food item and where is it stuck? 

Her bright blue eyes look at me questioning why are you just standing there during this time of catastrophe?  "Mum, you're making me nervous."

In my best mum voice I inquire, "OK sweetheart, what exactly is wrong?"

"I put a wee, teeny, tiny, li'l purple grape inside of brother's chair," is her answer.

"I'm sorry, you put what?  Where?"

"I said, I put a teeny, li'l grape inside of brother's chair and I can't get it out and I want it.  Now!!"

Picking up the yellow, formed, plastic chair, I discover there is a hole about 3/4 inch in diameter under the seat portion, between two hollow rear legs.  (Did I mention the legs are hollow?  All four of 'em?  Yeah, well it's kind of a big obstacle.)

Instantly I think, "Get this thing out now or it will rot turning into an indescribable stench haunting our nostrils 'till the end of eternity."  Turning on the rational switch, I brainstorm on what sort of object can be shoved into a little hole to get a globular object, appearing to be nearly the same size as the hole, out.  All this while still balancing the chair at such an angle that said object does not plummet to the bottom of one of the afore mentioned hollow legs, or fall into a crevasse created from the hollow backrest.  In a moment of pure genius, I grab a two foot, metal shishkabob skewer from a nearby drawer and... VWALLA!!!  I successfully impale the grape without releasing any oozing guts.  Now to maneuver it out without disimpaling it.  And again, BOOM!!, instant success.  The grape has been removed.  (So glad for the talents I gained playing that boardgame called Operation back in the '80's.)  Being as this chair is probably 15 to 20 years old, and the inside of it has probably never seen a cleaning agent of any kind, I declare the grape inedible and toss it into the rubbish bin. 

Seeing that visual cues my dear daughter into a screaming fit, "Mum!  I wanted to eat that grape.  Now it's gone!  Get it back!" 

My brain explodes into nonverbal rational dialog, "First of all, I don't think the world will fall apart around you over this one impaled, possibly highly toxic grape.  And second, you have an entire container full of freshly washed, destemmed grapes in the living room... where this entire saga started from."  However those are not the words that fall out of my mouth.  Instead I say the following, "I forbid you to consume that grape as it was just removed from the highly toxic nucleus of that anctient artifact of a chair, and when tossed into the rubbish bin it landed inside of one of your piddle filled diapers.  See, just one more reason to be potty trained right now.  You could have saved that grape from the harsh sentence of decomposition via human pee."

With that, my wee, precious, little girl immediately stops her tantrum, pivots on her toes ballerina style, and skips into the living room, not because she understood or even cared about what just occurred over the past 15 minutes.  It was only because she had just heard the title sequence to Sesame Street. 

End of saga. 

Oh yeah, she did earn her feathered, glittery, pink potty tiara because it was, after all, the first day she had no *potty in the underpants* accidents.