Monday, April 11, 2011

Mistakes we make with our children (new title for the entire blog?)

As a preface to this entry, I would like to change the online names of my daughters to IR(five-year-old) and ML(two-year-old). I don't want this blog to come up if a future friend, enemy, or the worst of all, frenemy, Google's them, so I will continue to keep their names out. (I know I didn't say boyfriend...shutup)

I would like tell a story about karma. I don't particularly believe in karma, but we sometimes get what we deserve, so when that happens I will call it karma.

I have a cousin, we will call him BA, who has a new baby boy. To say that BA is accident prone is like saying that a tsunami is wave. I am being a little mean for including this story in my blog, but if I was really mean, I could write a blog everyday for a year about all the things that BA has done to either embarass or hurt himself. I can only imagine the things that are in little baby BA's future, and I'm more than a little envious of all the stories he will have to tell about his father.

A few weeks ago, I got to see BA, his wife EB, and little boy BA at a wedding shower. Usually EB takes the opportunity of seeing me to tell me stories about BA and the absent minded things he has done, but this time, BA was more than happy to tell me a story about EB and little boy BA.

"Last week, EB was sitting on the couch and little boy BA was laying next to her. She was doing something else and the baby rolled sideways off the couch." He went on to describe how his lovely wife performed a spiderman, Tom Cruise, or ninja like move and caught little boy BA with one hand a split second before he hit the ground. I think he teased her about letting him fall off the couch, even though, to me, it sounded like he was more than impressed by his wife's superhuman quickness in saving their son from hitting the floor.

Not long after telling me this story, BA was trying to figure out how to eat his food while holding his infant son. BA has trouble eating a peanut butter sandwich without getting a stain on his shirt, and nobody knows this better than his wife, so she told him to put little boy BA in the car seat and then move the car seat next to her. So BA gingerly placed his son into the car seat and grabbed the handle to swing it over to his wife. The problem was that he didn't lock the arm of the car seat, which allowed he seat to swing forward as he lifted it. Little boy BA didn't have a chance. As the front of the seat fell down, the back leaped forward, launching the baby into a head first dive into the carpet. There was a brief moment of stillness while everyone, including the baby, tried to figure out what just happened, but that ended when he let out a nice little scream to express his displeasure. I waited the obligatory few seconds to make sure the baby was okay before I laughed, and my wife scolded me until she realized that EB was laughing as well.

I was nice. I told BA how I accidentally hit IR in the head with a pot when she was two. Okay, yes, that was after I laughed for a while and, yes, maybe I reenacted the position of the baby on the carpet after he was launched into a faceplant, but I was nice after that.

So here is where the karma comes into play. The day after we got home, we were in the living room and one of the compact fluorescent bulbs in our ceiling fan burned out, or stopped working, I don't know the correct phrasing for when a bulb that is supposed to last for six years stops working after six months. So I got out the step stool to replace the bulb. IR and ML were playing on the floor around me and my wife was sitting on the couch. I climbed to the second step and unscrewed the old bulb and went to step back down. I felt something soft under my foot and looked down to see that it was ML's face. She had layed her head on the first step and I didn't know it. I jumped off and stepped on a toy and almost fell down. ML screamed and wouldn't let me console her. She went right to her mother and it was then that I saw a big red line across her cheek where it was pressed into the step stool. She eventually forgave me with a little smile after I got her a baggie of ice, but that just made me feel more guilty.

So BA, as long as you never step on your son's face, you will not be as bad as me.

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