A Momentous Occasion

For the past year I have been prodding, bribing, pleading, and begging Isaac to blow through his nose. No matter what I used as motivation he never ever blew through his nose. To make things worse he actually thought the sound of blowing our noses was us sniffing so whenever I would tell him to blow out his nose he would sniff the snot right back up. This winter was the worst, he sniffed so badly that he would complain to me that his ears were hurting. I so was frustrated, there was nothing I could do to get him to blow his own nose, I tried everything. Finally, for the first time yesterday and after 15 minutes of bribing and forcing his mouth closed so that he could realize that breathing through his nose wasn't going to kill him, he did it. Well, he breathed through his nose and when he exhaled I praised him and gave him candy. I told him that was what blowing through his nose was and that if he did it really hard I would give him some candy. It worked! Today has been a fantastic day of blowing. Finally after 2 and 1/2 years my son can blow through his nose. The best part about this is that this morning I heard my 16 month old Andrew sniffing and I went right over to him, put a tissue to his nose, showed him how to do it once, and he did it just like that. Yeah, I laughed pretty hard.