Matthew had an ear infection last week and was all stuffed up. Like most 2-year olds, he refused to blow his nose properly, instead sniffing the snot back in most of the time. However, we’ve solved the problem — Dora went out and bought what I believe to be the greatest invention of all time: the orrszívó porszívó. To describe the orrszívó porszívó, it is best to start by translating a couple key words: orr = nose, porszívó = vacuum cleaner. And that’s basically what it is: an attachment that you can insert into your vacuum cleaner hose to suck the snot out of your toddler’s nose.
I know this sounds terribly uncomfortable, but it is not as bad as you would think and it works like a charm — much more effective than those nasal aspirator bulbs that we had in the US. The vacuum isn’t overly powerful when you hook it up and fire up the vacuum cleaner; I think they may have engineered a few leaks into the system to avoid pulling too hard. Still, toddlers don’t generally like it (though I guess they don’t like people poking anything in their nose or ears). The ads show a baby smiling with his orrszívó porszívó (see the picture at the top, or this official youtube video, where they somehow found a small kid that would use it on himself). This youtube video, where a mother demonstrates her restraining techniques, is closer to reality. In our case, the mere sight of the orrszívó porszívó sends Matthew screaming, “No porszívó” and running in the opposite direction. As an added benefit to adopting the orrszívó porszívó, after a couple of rounds, Matthew has suddenly “remembered” how to blow his nose properly!