Yesterday morning, Sophie demanded choices, as she always does, so I yanked two tee shirts out of her very disorganized drawer.

Funny — one was a tie dye with a heart in the middle. The other, her “Sweet Heart” tee. She chose the Sweet Heart. I love that shirt, too. It’s got a fairly realistic looking heart on it, covered in sprinkles, designed by a way-cool local artist named Roy Wasson Vale. (He got his start painting signs at Trader Joe’s! You can find his stuff at MADE: www.madephx.com)

Sprinkles and hearts, two of my favorite things. I don’t usually like to think about anything medical (Grey’s Anatomy aside), anything that points toward our mortality, but as a mom I have been forced to look at – and appreciate — the heart. Sophie had open heart surgery at 4 months and 4 years, and yeah, I’ll admit it, I have a bit of a heart motif going. I figure your kid goes through that, you can get away with being a little sappy.

Sophie’s heart is strong. (I hate even typing that — hold on while I knock wood. OK, I’m back.) Ray took her to the cardiologist on Tuesday for a 6-month check up; so it’s funny that those heart shirts emerged the next day. Sophie doesn’t talk much about her heart surgery, though sometimes she likes to recall the dramatic moment when she came out of the anesthesia and croaked, “apple juice, apple juice.” (Not my own favorite moment to recall. That sucked.)

Sometimes we do talk about her heart. Tuesday evening, I took the girls over to an end of the year open house at the school, then we grabbed a bite with Ms. X. As I tried to take Sophie out of her car seat at the restaurant, she announced, “I don’t love you! I love Ms. X.”

I know Sophie loves me. She was tired and cranky (full moon hangover?) and just trying to play me.

But I try not to encourage such behavior (I hate the game my girlfriends I used to play called “Pick Between” — use your imagination — when applied to an almost 6 year old’s loved ones) so I tried something new.

“Hey Sophie,” I said. “Stop and ask your heart if there’s room to love BOTH Ms. X and me.”

Sophie pulled the neck of her dress wide (darn, that’s a cute hand me down), stuck her head inside, and did just that. She emerged with a grin.

“My heart says love both you and Ms. X!” she announced triumphantly. And we went inside to get our El Pollo Loco.

TRICK OR TREAT?
with Amy Silverman & Deborah Sussman Susser
Sat., Oct 25
10am-1pm
$30

Halloween: The time of year when we dress up as what devils and/or delights us and count our treats. Join us for a creative writing workshop that promises to be creepy and delicious, and to help you strengthen and refine your writing.

Please note: Participants will be contacted by the instructors, given a writing assignment (essay or poetry, your choice, no longer than two pages) and asked to bring copies to read aloud and workshop.

Amy Silverman and Deborah Sussman Susser have co-taught the workshop Mothers Who Write since 2001. Amy is managing editor of Phoenix New Times. She’s written for the New York Times, Travel + Leisure and salon.com. Her radio credits include This American Life, transom.org and KJZZ, the Phoenix NPR affiliate. She lives in Tempe. Deborah is associate editor of Jewish News of Greater Phoenix and a regular commentator for KJZZ. She lives in Tempe, too.

(Good advice, though be honest: Who among us doesn’t enjoy a good session with a few Q-tips?)

No one ever said anything about noses. Except not to pick, of course. Which is why I was annoyed the other day, when I noticed Sophie digging for gold.

“No pickin’!” I admonished gently.

“I have a bee in my nose!” she told me.

Okay, first, I had to stop and celebrate the use of a beautiful sentence. But I did worry about articulation, because why would Sophie have a bee up her nose? Since she repeated it several times, I assumed she was not only using a good sentence, but a lovely, well-placed metaphor — after all, it might feel like a bee had flown up your nose, if it was itchy. Right?

Wrong. It was Saturday, and Sophie and I were out for a quick shopping trip, hooking up with our friends Cindy, Deborah and Anna. Cindy runs the amazing shop MADE, in downtown Phoenix (www.madephx.com), and Deborah (among her many talents) is mother to Anna, age 10. We gathered in the store. The grown ups chatted, and so, apparently, did the kids.

“Uh, Amy, Sophie just told me she has a popcorn kernel up her nose,” Anna announced, only moments after our arrival.

How the hell did she figure that out? She didn’t even know that Sophie had, in fact, been eating popcorn on the drive over.

“Sophie, did you put a popcorn kernel up your nose?” I asked, having a deja vu moment, since Annabelle and I just finished reading “Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing” by Judy Blume the other night. (Out of Sophie’s earshot, I swear, though the resemblance to the scene involving Dribble the Turtle and Fudge the Toddler — no more, I don’t want to be a spoiler — was a little uncanny.)

“Yes!” Sophie said.

But you know, you can never be sure with Sophie. She also insisted she had not shoved a popcorn kernel up her nose, particularly after I’d tried blowing in her mouth to dislodge it. (Not pleasant for either of us, let me assure you.)

This all happened, naturally, just a few minutes after noon. So the pediatrician’s office was closed. Among the three of us, Deborah, Cindy and I called close to a dozen friends and family members, most of whom advised that a trip to urgent care was likely in the future, and all of whom had their own great stories of Things Up Noses. (I liked the one about how the woman knew her kid had shoved a coffee bean up there, because of the aroma of hazelnut; the rotting Nerf one was disgusting; but my favorite, which just came in this morning, involved the kid who said, “I have an eye up my nose” — and sure enough, his father later pulled out a renegade googly eye from a school craft project.)

We had exhausted the possibilities offered on the phone and by WebMD.com, as well as the supply of temporary tattoos Cindy had graciously offered up to distract Sophie from the blowing thing, when from across the room, we heard:

“AHCHOO!”

I looked over, and there was a somewhat startled looking Sophie. And a popcorn kernel.

She had told the truth. The metaphors will come later — I’m certain of it.