Mom, look what I can do!

Joe called me into his room after I’d put him to bed last night, asking for a drink of water.

Classic stall technique.

He also held up his finger and said, “Get rid of it.”

As it was dark, I fumbled to find the end of his finger, where, what I thought was a broken fingernail, was hanging off. I easily removed it and tried to throw it in the trash, but as it took several tries to scrape the sticky substance off my own finger, I asked,

“Is this a booger? From your nose?”

Though I couldn’t see his beaming face, I could hear it in his voice.

“I got it myself!”

The last time I removed a booger from his nose, I had to wrestle him into the corner of the couch and use the jaws of life to pry his hands away from his face. (How is a two-year-old so strong?!)

So I said, “That’s good I guess.”

As I left his room, thinking maybe I won’t have to struggle to evacuate his nostrils again, it occurred to me that I had effectively taught my son to pick his nose.

Yep. *I* did that.

Sigh.