This weekend, I was feeling like a pretty bad parent. A few days ago my daughter was jumping up and down, laughing and yelling in some weird language, in her crib and in the process hit her bottom lip.
It’s a little weird walking in a store, just me and the kid, and then some strange old middle-aged woman gives you a comment like “Oh my God! What happened to her!” and then looks at you -the Dad, of course, with those ‘suspicious’ eyes (you know the ones that say “I Know What YOU Did Last Summer”). Well, to tell you the truth, I felt as if my shirt transformed into a pork-grind stained wife-beater, a beer can AND a 3-day beard magically appeared on my face (like in those old Bug Bunny cartoons) that instant.
I’m not one to make excuses, normally I would have cracked something amusing like “Aliens”, “Fight with Webster”, or whatever, but in this case I told the truth hoping she would go away (the little dog in her cart wearing underwear told me that she was a serious woman.) Even though, she still gave me weird looks as she walked away behind some aisle.
Things only got worse when yesterday she started running in the garage and tripped on a doormat. When we picked her up, there was blood. Man, there’s seriously nothing worse in the world than to see your own kids’ blood (heck, I don’t even like to see my own blood!) She was fine after a few minutes, but the lip grew like a mo-fo.
Now she looks like Angelina Jolie with her two big lips. Maybe she can start a modeling career (or maybe not, she might weight too much at 23 pounds.)
I know that at 17-months (as of today!) kids are prone to all kinds of falls, slips, tumbles, etc. but in today’s world where parents get locked up for anything that resembles anything 'suspicious' - I don’t know, that’s the part that freaks me out the most.
So as of today, I’m wrapping my daughter in bubble wrap (the kind that I like to pop out of boredom to annoy the wife) until her coordination gets a little better- I don’t know maybe by kindergarten. The nice thing about this solution is not only the ultra-safety factor (people ship Picasso’s in bubble-wrap) but if she were to fall – the sounds of “pops” will warn the wife and I of any impeding danger.
O.K. so am I being paranoid here, or should I start making getaway plans to Mexico? I can’t be the first parent ever to go through this…