You'll feel better after this, I promise

Today, I am performing a public service.  It has been a crappy week and it's only Wednesday, so sit back.  Relax.  Let me make you feel better about your parenting and life skills.

Top ten reasons no one should worry about their parenting while I'm on the planet.

#10  Garrett fell out of his crib, not once, not twice, but three times after he learned to pull up because I repeatedly failed to raise the side of the crib after I laid him in it.  (Bonus point!  That kind of crib is now completely recalled!  Fabulous!)

#9  Nate has scooted down under the tray of his crappy, keep-it-in-the-car stroller and gotten his head stuck, not once, not twice, not three times, oh hell I have no idea how many times.  I just carried on my way, casually shoving his head into the foam and extracting him below the tray whenever he failed to Houdini his way out of the damn thing.  Guess what?!  That stroller was just recalled.  Because babies have suffocated themselves getting their heads stuck under the tray while their oblivious mother checks Kindergarten mailboxes for airplane art made with paper and approximately 500,000,000 staples.  Fabulous!  Also, we are responsible for the current worldwide staple shortage.

#8  I once noticed extremely excited shrieking from the basement during quiet time and I completely ignored it like I always do until I heard someone shriek excitedly, "kill it! kill it!" which alerted me that something possibly alive had entered the purview of my pack of toddlers.  Upon hightailing it down there to save the poor, wretched creature, I found my three small children in a ring of death around a horrifically large and fairly poisonous male Hobo spider. 

#7  Last week, I noticed an uncomfortable dampness on my Nate-carrying hip at the grocery store and I was supremely pissed off because I had just changed his diaper before I left for the grocery store and I still had two school pick ups to do and now we were both soaked in urine, thanks a lot crappy Costco diapers.  Then, I peered down the back of his pants and the crappy Costco diapers were all, HA! this one's on you, lady, you have to actually put a diaper back on the baby after taking the soiled diaper off if you want it to contain the urine.

#6 Walking my triple stroller down the boulevard one fine fall day, engaged in conversation with Elise - who is commonly at the center of my parenting troubles - I fully rammed Garrett's head into the side view mirror of a parked car.  Thankfully, it was the kind that gives for drivers that hit things, but still.

#5  Coming home from a Halloween party last year at 8:30 p.m., my four-year-old son asked his father, "what are all those twinkling things in the sky?"   That's right. I am so fanatic about bedtime that my four-year-old had never seen the stars.

#4  Quinn very nearly drowned in an icy puddle at the bottom of a slide two winters ago.  He had just learned to walk and I chatted away - with Elise, of course - oblivious to his upside down in a freezing cold puddle status not four feet in front of me.  NOTE:  All water is dangerous, even icy, bottom-of-slide puddles.

#3 On a particularly bad, grumpy winter morning last year, I snarled so viciously at Garrett when he dropped the Starbucks latte that I had purchased for a friend on my way to our play date that he cried for the entire three hour play date. 

#2  I have, on numerous occasions, eaten a special treat that I made the children save until after dinner and then found some trivial excuse to yank treats after dinner so that I had more time to procure another treat for the next day.  I tell myself this heightens the anticipation for them.

#1  Driving to Christian Kindergarten the other morning, I swore under my breath at another driver.  My daughter piped merrily from the seat behind me, "was he a dickwad, momma?"  He was, but that is beside the point.  Obviously.

There now.  Don't you feel better?