Two days ago, my daughter stuck a button up her nose. She called to me from the bathtub to say "Mommy, there's a button in my nose." I was taken aback, of course, so I said "What? What button?"

"A button from my sweater." Being naturally intrigued, I headed for the laundry basket to find her sweet little sweater, indeed, missing a button. So I freaked. I looked up her nose and squeezed it. I couldn't see or feel anything. I called my mom, and tried to get her to convince Grace that she had concocted the whole thing ... to no avail. Finally, being two parts desperate, and one part evil, I told Grace that if she really had a button in her nose, we would have to go to the doctor and he would stick something up there to get it. It would probably hurt.

She decided that she hadn't stuck a button in her nose after all. It had been a potato of all things, and I relaxed, secure in the notion that she was just having an inordinately imaginative day. So bathed and bedded, she asked me to tell her a story. I changed the context of The Boy who Cried Wolf to involve a little girl who cried button-up-the-nose. I finished in full didactic fashion and began Gracie Red Riding Hood on a more playful note.

Mrs. Riding Hood had just handed Gracie the basket of goodies for Grandma when flesh Grace sneezed. Unfortunate me was leaning over her at the moment, so I got it right in the face. She threw her head back to sneeze again and I lifted my hand. When her sneeze was complete, I was holding a button. Luckily, my verbal filter kicked in because I was thinking NO F*$#ING WAY! I was totally stunned.

This all begged the question: "Grace, what possessed you to insert a button (that barely would have fit up MY nose, by the way) into your nostril?" She replied quite simply, "I put it up there so the puppy wouldn't get it." Coupled with the fact that she deliberately BIT the button off the sweater, which she divulged to my mother, her logic must have been "This button clearly isn't safe attached to my clothing, so I'll rip it off and stick it in my nose." Failsafe.