Today's "NOOOO..." Moment

Some days I feel all I say is no. Shocking, I know, with the sweet beautiful miracles I call my children. My latest hair-pulling moment is that no matter how small, Mary Ellen seems to find every tiny foreign object on our carpet and put it in her mouth! Now I know that she's just done it, when I look over...usually from blogging or my Facebook page...and see her chewing something. As I scream "Nooooo" as mean as I can to hopefully detour later snacks, she merely smiles at me like "what?".

Things I've now dug out of her mouth...

• Small food crumbs of who-knows-what.
• Wood shards from their toy baskets
• Chips of paint...and I used to make fun of those people who worried about lead paint. I'd piously think, "just don't let your kids eat your walls, big deal!" Live and learn.
• Long strands of my hair.
• Tiny balls of fuzz.
• and the grossest of all...ants! This has happened twice...one time it was on her chin, nice and moist. They are dead ants however...she doesn't hunt them down.
• But most are truly unidentifiable and so small they can barely be seen with the adult eye.

The sad thing is, we have a maid. So I win no Mother-of-the-year awards this week. Must do more vacuuming! Something tells me this may just be the beginning :-)