I'm A Worse Parent Than You!
Thursday, June 19, 2008 at 08:31PM 
I once took Lilly into the men’s room in Newark Airport. I should have let her pee in her pants, it would have been cleaner. She didn’t dig the ass symphony or the toxic stench. I wonder why? My phone rang and of course I looked to see who was calling—God knows it could have been a matter of national security. Lilly proceeded to stick her arm in the toilet. Trust me, you don’t want me to paint that picture.
When Lilly was a baby we went to a party in Wash Park in Denver. As the evening went on she slept in her car seat on the floor. When we left I popped her car seat on the base and we drove home. It was winter and she was covered with a blanket. When we arrived home we were horrified to discover she wasn’t buckled into her seat. I read the car seat manual; it strongly encouraged having the infant buckled in.
I recent left Lulu in the car in our driveway. MRS, Lilly, Lola and I were in the kitchen when we queried, “Where’s Lulu?” That was my bad, she sits on my side of the car. (Before you call child services, she was in the car for no more than 2 minutes and it was no more than 67 degrees that evening. And, she was only pissed at me for the next day and a half.)
We recently spent 2 hours looking for our lost dog, Lola. She was in MRS’s car. To make matters worse, MRS looked in her car early on in the search. The girls were devastated at the thought of losing their dog. I had the neighborhood on high alert. I drove around harassing pedestrians if they had seen her. As the McMoron family scoured the earth, a neighbor heard barking coming from our garage. Mystery solved.
When Lulu learned to walk, she tumbled down the stairs right in front of both MRS and me. I caught her on the third bounce, though. Injury count: zero.
Lilly learned to say “fuck” when she was two and a half. I think she got it from me. The really dumb thing we did was freak out when she said it which caused her to drop F-bombs for two weeks. The other daycare parents loved us for that.
When we brought Lilly home from the hospital after she was born, we had 1 diaper in the house. Hey, it was out first kid; how were we supposed to know we needed (a lot of) diapers?
When Lulu was just under two, I was tossing her on my bed; she loved it. I gave her a little extra umph on one toss and she bounced so high she flipped off the bed like an Olympic high diver. Injury count: zero.
When Lilly asked me if my freind’s wife was having a baby I said, “no, she just looks like she is.” When they were over for a BBQ the next week, Lilly happened to let my ex-friend’s wife know that I said she “just looks like she’s having a baby but she really isn’t.” My friend wasn’t mad at me; he’s just not allowed to be my friend anymore. I don’t expect his wife will be sending a Christmas card this year.
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Reader Comments (20)
I see you one arm-dunking and one no-buckle and raise you one complete toilet head-dunking and going to work everyday while leaving my three under-five children at home with their dad on a construction site for eight solid months.
Exhibit A
Exhibit B
I could have started my response here with "oh yeah and I remember that time as well when..."
Double the kids double the list here for sure!
I've done the not-buckled thing more than once. How many times I'm not going to say.
The easiest way to keep yourself from doing that is to clip your car keys to the car seat strap when you unbuckle your baby. (Everyone does have their keys on carabiners, right?) You can't retrieve your keys without at least having to think for a millisecond about why they're clipped there.
And did I mention it's a bad idea to spray canned air down the back of your son's diaper as a joke? The only good thing is that it wasn't the front.
Oh, and remember that monster snowstorm we had back in, I think it was 2003? The first one, the one that shut Denver down for three days? No diaper rash cream. And my son was a chronic diaper rash baby.
We left Bubba Jr. in his carseat on the kitchen table all night. I woke up at 4 am and had a bad feeling somthing was wrong. Good news. He was alseep.
My son has survived to 18 even though I:
forgot about him in the car seat, where he slept all night.
lost him not once but 4 times in the mall.
forgot to pick him up from school, to the point a teacher had to call to remind me.
forgot his 15th birthday.
Hum , I've done the not buckled in thing. Husband let Eieny fall off a table right in front of him when she was 9 months old. I can't think of anything else at the moment though.
Good thing farce is fair use, or you'd have Wiley all over you for that book cover. Or they'd hire you as a designer.
Josie, I've forgotten to pick my son up from school twice this year - his school does early release one day a week, and I managed to space on the fact that I needed to be there at 2:15 instead of 3:30 twice.
I hate it when they stick their arm in the toilet.
I hate it even more when they go fishing.
Our youngest always has his hands in the toilet. I am thisclose to bleachinghim head to toe. I too have done the unbuckled thing, and my oldest fell off the changing table when she was 4 months old. We didn't think she could roll over yet.
just curious - does anyone here have a kid who hasn't fallen off the changing table? It's so common, I didn't even think to mention it.
My son fell off the changing table when my husband turned to put his dirty diaper in the Diaper Genie. My husband realized what was happening, and turned back to try to grab him before he hit the floor. In his desperate grab, he slammed my son into the shelf about halfway down.
I could tell some stories about how many times and in how many different ways my husband dropped my son. I actually halfway accused him of doing it on purpose at one point, because it seemed like every time I had to leave them home alone, my son got dropped. I feel really bad about that now (the accusation part, not the leaving them home alone part). The more I got on his case, the more nervous he felt, the clumsier he got.
We joke now that it's a good thing we had a boy first, so he could get all that nervousness out of his system.
I don't think he's dropped my daughter once. Or at least if he has, he's known well enough to not tell me. Or maybe he just likes our daughter better enough to not drop her...
Forgetting to buckle in? Check
Leaving in car? Check
Bouncing off the bed (high and hard)? Check
We've also dropped Thing 1 head first on ceramic tile. I've let them have pretzels and water for a meal. And here's my worst and most recent moment, we had a birthday party last Saturday which turned into the kids all going to bed and the parents getting ripped (everyone was sober for the first 4-5 hours of "kid time"). I was up until 4 in the morning, and was too hungover to do anything for most of Sunday- which was Father's Day. I slept it off in shame.
YEah pretty much done it all...let them have pudding or candy for breakfast...leave them unattended in the bath...yeah..
I think the unbuckled carseat is a rite of passage that ALL parents must do to qualify.
I nearly decapitated my oldest daughter by pulling into the garage with her standing up in sunroof. She ducked just in time. A year later I rolled up the cr window on her before I realized she had her head out the window. Yep, mom of the year here. She won't ever let me forget these "mishaps". Like I don't feel bad enough!
Went to Six Flags. Little one (age 6) loves roller coasters. Started small (mini mine train) and built up (mine train, etc.) Daughter though first was too slow, second fun, so the next one should be great. Only stipulation "Nothing that goes upside down, okay?" The Giant does not go upside down, but it is not the 'next step up.'. After I told her to start breathing, she looked at me and said, "Daddy, I don't want to die today, please make this stop" Back to parenting school.
How about this? Toddler buckled into the car seat...secured in the backseat...but the car is running...and the doors are locked...in the middle of winter! The good new: the police will unlock your car if there is a child inside. The bad news: they hosed my automatic locks!
Also, after watching his big sister at swimming lessons, the son decided to dive off the sofa onto the hardwood floor.
I could go on but I will stop now. I mean, they are all still alive and that's the important part, right?
Oh yeah, did I mention I did the car thing twice? BLEH!
"I caught her on the third bounce"
ROFL!