"Group Therapy" or "It's a Miracle Any of them Make it to Adulthood"

OK. So I was reading blogs and came across a post on Mormon Mommy Wars about stupid things we have done as mothers/parents (kids ingesting holly berries in your yard/swallowing bottles of children's Tylenol, etc.) I wanted to add my own comments, but realized I had so many that it would have essentially been its own post.

And so it is.

I am finding this to be especially relevant today because last night, as I was wrangling children to leave the Chick-Fil-A play area, Keaton once again reminded me how totally incompetent I am.

I was sitting right by the door putting Branik's shoes back on while simultaneously asking, then begging Keaton to come out of the tubes and do the same. He didn't say a word, so I assumed he was trying to hide from me. I told him firmly to come down. Silence. I pretended to leave without him ("Okay Keaton, I'm going to go to the car and get your blanket without you"). Silence. Now I was getting really ticked, so I pulled out every mother's best weapon: "Keaton Blake, you have until 3. One...TWO!!!...THREE!!!" Silence.

At this point, I turned around and glanced out the window of the play area to see my 4 year old IN THE PARKING LOT walking around. I don't know how he did it. I was right there. But he got past me, out two sets of doors and into the drive thru line at dusk. The best part is that instead of berating myself privately, I got to have several witnesses. Chick-Fil-A patrons at that. Awesome. Totally the people I want to have critiquing my (lack of) mothering skills.

Alas, this is just the most recent in my long line of failures as a mother. I post them because I like to confess (I should have been Catholic) but also because I know you are all going to comment away on how you have done similar things. Right? Right. And then we'll all feel better.

Drumroll please:

Rylan was born in February in Ohio, and when she was 10 days old we decided to go out to eat with Boone's parents who were visiting. We bundled her up and put one of those sherpa fleece carrier covers over her seat to protect her from the cold Cleveland night. She of course fell asleep in the carseat and we carried her into the restaurant and plunked her next to us in a chair. About 30 minutes later she started screaming out of the blue, and when I went to get her out of the seat, she was beet red and sweating (at 10 days old). It must have been 120 degrees in her sherpa tent and she was clothed in a onesie, fleece outfit, socks, and a hat, and then SWADDLED in a blanket. We nearly cooked her. Off to a fantastic start.

Twice when she was a baby we had her fall asleep in our arms at church, and we transferred her to her car seat and put a blanket over her. Then we left church, snapped the seat into the base, and drove home on the freeway, only to discover when we got through our front door that we had never buckled her into the seat. This happened at least once with each kid, but seems to be a fairly common screw-up based on the other blog I referenced.

When she was 3 months old but not rolling yet, I put her in the middle of our queen sized bed for a nap. She started crying awhile later and I went in to discover that she had scooted with her feet hard enough that she had fallen off the bed -- directly onto the only pillow that was on the floor.

(Yes, all of this before she was 90 days old. Sick, isn't it?)

Things tapered off pretty quickly for Rylan (I found her eating cat vomit once when she was 1, but nothing big). Then Keaton was born. Get comfortable.

When Keaton was about 3 weeks old Boone fell asleep with him on his chest out on the couch. He did this a lot, as it was the only way our newborns slept the first month or so. I went upstairs to our room to sleep, knowing that it wouldn't be too long before Boone brought him up to me. I woke up out of a dead sleep about 45 minutes later, went downstairs, and found Keaton had rolled off of Boone and onto the floor, face down into a throw pillow. Boone is the lightest sleeper in the world and I am the heaviest, so I don't know how it is that I woke up and he stayed asleep. (Well, yes I do, but keep reading.)

When we lived in Texas, we had windows in our front room that were really low to the ground -- about a foot or so. Because they were so low and I had 2 young children, I was always careful to keep them shut. But one day when Keaton was about 18 months old, I put both kids down for a nap and used the quiet time to steam clean the carpet -- you know, because I'm addicted to floor cleaning. When I was done, I opened our windows to help circulate the air and dry everything out and went back to my room to fold laundry -- you know, because it's my favorite pastime. About 30 minutes later Keaton woke up and I got him out of his crib and set him down to play in his room. I went back to my laundry den and picked up where I left off, whistling a cheery tune all the while.

5 minutes later there was a knock at my door. I opened it to find "that kid" (you know who I mean -- the 8 year old kid in the neighborhood who is always outside unsupervised with bare feet until 10:00 pm while Mom is on the back porch chain smoking and yapping on the phone) holding Keaton's hand.

"Your baby was in the road," she said all judgingly, then handed him over to me and huffed off. Yeah. He pushed the screen out of the window that I had forgotten was still open, crawled out through out front flower bed, and ran down our steep front yard and into the street. This picture doesn't do the steepness justice, but it does prove how low the window was. Whatever.



I could go on and on, and tell you that he basically did the same thing again last year (went through the front door unnoticed until a neighbor retrieved him) which is why we have chain locks now in addition to the door alarm, or I could tell you about how 3 days ago he went into the garage to get his "volcano" (plastic ice cream cone) out of the car (this happens without incident frequently) and started yelling "Mom. MOOOMMMM!!!" a few minutes later, which brought me to the garage to find him stuck on top of the Tahoe on the luggage rack, or about the time he ate half a bottle of gummy vitamins (poison control said we were fine since they didn't have iron), but I think we all get the picture.

I'd like to conclude my confession today with my all time lowest and scariest moment as a mother. Prepare to be mortified.

Shortly after we moved here I was painting Branik's room -- making it all cute and feeling like this great mom for having such a darling nursery for my last baby. He was almost 4 months old and had finally transitioned into his crib from the Pack 'N Play in our room. However, since the only time I had to paint uninterrupted was at night, and since his room was all fumy, and since I had put the Pack 'N Play away, I put him on a blanket in our walk-in closet to sleep so I could finish up the room. Our closet is pretty good sized and it's not like he needed a ton of room anyway, and this way Boone could come in and out of our room without disturbing our sleeping baby. Good idea, right?

So Boone goes to bed awhile later and I am painting away, when I accidentally dip my brush into the wrong can of paint. I went into the bathroom to rinse the brush off, and decided to peek in on Branik. When I opened the door, I could hear the sound of plastic rustling, and flipped on the light to find little Branik with a Walmart bag against his face. Like Rylan had, he used his feet to scoot diagonally off the blanket and into the corner of the closet where Boone had some old scrubs in the plastic bag to donate to Goodwill. I nearly had a stroke. In fact, even typing it out makes me a little sick.

So yeah. I am not quite sure who decided I was capable of raising children, but I am pretty sure that without divine intervention I would have blown it big time on more than one occasion. I like to think that I am learning from my mistakes and that really, I am on my guard 99% of the time. But if you have kids, you know that all it takes is the 1% you slip up to shatter your confidence and make you question your competence.

(Good gravy this is long! Yikes.)

To all of my fellow moms out there who think they are doing a lousy job -- don't you feel better now? You're welcome. And I won't blame you if you quit letting me watch your kids so you can have a break.