The Potato Head Incident

NOTE: Today, was the last weekday that my wife will be home to assist me with the kids. She goes back to work on Monday. Leaving me to solo with the two kids. Now, we will separate the wheat from the chaff.

On to the Potato Head Incident.
Tiernan has a Mr. Potato head, he has pretty much ignored for most of the four or five months that he’s had it. Earlier this week, he dug it out of the toy box in his bedroom and brought downstairs to be placed in heavy rotation. He’s played with it off and on all week.
A quick primer on Mr. Potato Head. Most of you know what this is, a piece of plastic with holes in it that you spear with body parts, i.e., eyes, ears, nose, arms, etc. These are connected to the potato with long, thin plastic shafts measuring about an inch and half, that are inserted into Mr. Potato Head’s holes.
Today while Tiernan was entertaining himself with some independent play and all of a sudden, he starts screaming and crying. He’s was just sitting at the play table in the living room and suddenly he’s screaming and bleeding from his nose.
“Tiernan what happened?,” says I.
He picks up Mr. Potato Head’s eyes and shows me how he was trying to put them into his head by inserting the long plastic shaft up his nose. After a few moments of crying and nose blowing he calmed down. We got a flashlight and checked out his nose and didn’t see anything dire. Upon seeing the flashlight he quickly forgot that he had a foreign object in his nostril and wanted to play with the light. We determined that, while he did hurt himself, he scared himself more than anything. 
I felt so proud. My son has crossed another threshold in his development. He learned two valuable lessons (I hope).
“THE NOSE IS NOT A STORAGE AREA and I AM NOT A POTATO HEAD.”
And that is exactly what happened. He understands that Mr. Potato Head works by putting things into the holes his face. And then he thought, “I have holes in my face. And they don’t seem to be used for much, other than that green ooze that comes out. This must be the intended use, to put things in, just like Mr. Potato Head. This is a teaching toy.”
And so it is, it teaches little boys not to insert anything into their orifices, which is a very painful but very valuable lesson. Life’s best lessons result in some sort of pain.