For your reading pleasure, a poem by Jeff:

Baby’s First Booger
- for Charlotte, 10 months

I showed it to her, as proof
that my brutal raid on her nose –
all that effort in the face of her screaming,
her twisting and flailing –
hadn’t been for nothing.

“See?” I said, holding it up for her. “This
is what I was after. That thing
was in your nose!”
She looked. She stared. She reached. She took. It stuck.
She tried to take it off
with a finger from the other hand,
but it stuck to that one too, of course.

Eventually she got sick of it all,
shook her fists in frustration,
then lost interest.
It was time for a nap.

An hour later, she’d produced another.
Same routine, same struggle, opposite nostril.
After the liberation, I again presented the bounty, the evidence
to show that some things don’t make sense at the time,
but are really for the best.
“I’ll bet you can breathe a bit better now,” I said.
But she wasn’t messing around. This time
she grabbed it right away
and put it in her mouth.