Saturday, February 21, 2009

My Most Proud 'Mommy FAIL' Moments

Thursday afternoon was one of my typical 'holy crap, this place is a wreck and I just don't have the energy to do anything about it' kind of days.

So I didn't.

I spent too much time on twitter where it's become a personal goal to make someone laugh in 140 characters. Ex: "10yo hounddog just chased a dust bunny across the room. Either she's getting senile or I have another smartass in the house. Off to clean!" Totally addicting, I'm telling you. By the time four o'clock rolled around, I realized that I was not only still in my pajamas, as were my sons, but the house was still a wreck and my fancy-pants dinner that I should have put on the stove three hours ago certainly wasn't making itself.

I got up, put on some cartoons for the boys to keep them out of the cleaning tornado that I was about to become. (Yeah, you know as well as I do THAT wasn't happening.) I did get dinner started though and from the smell of it, this might be the most delicious dinner I had prepared to date. For those of you who are trying to eat healthier, I have been spending a lot of time on the Cooking Light website. They have some awesome, easy to prepare dinners that are ready in minutes! For those of you who cook all the time and are damn good at it....pffft....is all I have to say.

This post was SO about something totally different. *ahem*

Anyway, my new neighbor Jessica called, so we went to the park while dinner simmered and the house cleaned itself. Heh...

When we got there, it was much colder than it had looked from my warm, cushy living room chair. Jessica immediately mentioned the freezing wind and that they wouldn't be able to stay much longer. (Lightweight.) Granted, she had been waiting about 30 minutes while I dressed the boys and tried to blow some of the 'been-sitting-in-the-same-spot-in-my-jammies-all-day' stink off me. My response? "Why don't you guys just come over to my house?!"

The second it left my lips I remembered the all-too-honest tweet about the hound dog and the dust bunny as well as the rest of the 'holy shit, did a bomb go off in here' mess that awaited us. It was too late...she came...she saw...and I think she either felt good about herself and her own domestic skills or vowed to never return. I know she didn't decide to never talk to me again, because my phone rang as soon as she got home.

"Hey, I know you cooked that 'fancy-pants' meal and all, but we are going out to grab some dinner and a beer if you guys want to join us." (Yeah, I totally made her smell my dinner and went on and on about how much work it was to assemble. It made me feel a little better about the house. A little.)

So dinner went in the fridge and we went out.

We hadn't been there 30 minutes and some stranger came carrying Deuce (the two year old) to us from the game room. The kid was screaming like I've never heard before. The man said something about him falling off a highchair and hitting his head. I didn't catch it all since I was too busy trying to climb under the table from embarrassment. The full story was that he was standing on TOP of a high chair, holding the toy rifle from the video game when he fell, backwards, and hit his head on the game console.

Never in my five years of parenting have I ever experienced a knot like that one. You've heard of a goose egg? Yeah, this was a perfectly shaped and appropriately sized golf ball sticking out of the back of his head. I'm not exaggerating here, it was the exact size of a golf ball. I had to keep touching it because I couldn't believe it was that big, and round, and dude, it was a golf ball. Deuce, didn't appreciate my amazement. Nor did he seem to enjoy having everyone else touch it. "Man, you have to feel his head! It's like a perfect golf ball! Feel that!"

Yeah, I know. Mommy FAIL, right?

On the way out, I started doing the mommy guilt thing. I should have been in there with him, I should have been watching him, yadda yadda yadda. I was starting to get pretty down on myself when I remembered the many other mommy FAIL moments in their short little lives.

There was the time I let my mom hold Deuce and she dropped him; like we all knew she would.

The time I put Bonus in a swing and left him while I went to check my email. Oh, and didn't bother to strap him in. Yeah, you got it. He fell, face first, onto the hardwood floor.

The numerous calls to those blessed saints at poison control who never said, "Where the hell were you when he was eating goo-be-gone?!" Oh, and by the way, apparently it is okay to drink it in small amounts as long as you don't get it in your lungs. (I know, what the hell?!)

Oh, and I can't forget the time I was nursing Bonus and decided I couldn't wait one more minute to go to the bathroom. I walked across the house, with him still latched, and made it there only to slam the back of his head on the door jam when I failed to realize the bathroom door was much narrower than the other doors. That one, was actually pretty funny. He looked up at me with this, "I have been given to a total dumbass" look before screaming bloody murder.

I almost forgot the time we drove all the way to DorkFish's work to show off our new son, Bonus, to the firefighters and when we got there realized we had never strapped him in.

In fact, most of my mommy FAIL moments had involved Bonus. I guess that's the way it rolls when you're the first-born. I suppose, in the grand scheme of life, Deuce really had it coming.

After all, we weren't saving for Harvard or anything.