The Black-Out

Parenting Lesson of the Day:

Never put your child down in a clean pile of laundry.


I'm really not quite sure why I did this, but I did, with tragic results. I'm still finding clothing, a day later, with Ginny's calling card on it. I was putting socks on her little feet and I thought: "Hey! Propping her up in this nice clean pile of laundry on my bed sounds like a fantastic idea!" No. It wasn't.

Where was my sanity? My common sense? Babies spew. All the time. And this wasn't just a dribble, this was full-fledged projectile vomit. It's like babies can sense the worst possible time to spew, and let it out with out any hesitation or remorse.

It made it wonder, have any of you parents out there done something silly like this and all the while something in the back of your head was shouting: "Don't do it you fool! Don't! Don't! Oh. You did..." Please tell me there are more silly parents like myself out there that seem to have these black-outs in common sense. Please feel free to share your humiliating stories so we can all feel better about ourselves.

Parenting Lesson of the Day

For those of you who follow my Facebook stati, you will have read several posts that I titled "parenting lesson of the day" followed by a quip about things concerning parenting I have learned the hard way, usually with humorous results. To give you an example here is one my sister-in-law told me that I particularly enjoyed:

Never, for even a minute, leave an undiapered baby alone on your carpet, especially when said baby ate 2 pieces of pizza for lunch!

True words of wisdom from a seasoned mother.

Veteran parents, you know what she means...future parents and unsuspecting readers--beware. Parenting is a humorous, messy business. Anyway, here's today's Parenting Lesson of the Day:

Someone really needs to invent cloth chip bags.

There's nothing worse than having your own guilty junk food pleasure wake up a blissfully sleeping baby. "Crinkle, Crinkle, Crunch, Crunch... Wah-Wah". *Sigh* However there is a simple solution. What?! Stop eating junk food?! Pff! Yeah right, you must not be a parent yet... No the simple answer is to revolutionize the junk food business by creating "Nap Friendly" packaging. Cloth chip bags and chocolate bags are the future--they're probably even recyclable! And please, no more of this "individually wrapped" business. Listen "Snack Food CEO's", if we parents finally get the chance to sit down and enjoy our junk food, we can't be bothered with these nonsensical wrappers! They seriously impede scarfing. Anyway, I'm thinking about the environment here.

The Beginning of Mommy-Moo

I've been called Moo by my family since long before I could remember. It propelled me into a life of loving everything cow related to the point of obsession and numerous nickname variations around the theme of "Moo". But I never stopped to consider why on earth my parents would title their adorable baby girl "Moo". When you think about it, calling a girl a cow is never very flattering... I just assumed that it was one of my dad's bizarre nicknames. After all, he called one of my brothers "Isaacarus Maximus" and my sister "Jenn-o-bot-o-bye". It never occurred to me that my nickname might have more meaning behind it. Then I found out the truth.

When we get older, it's refreshing to look through old photos and remember simpler times in our lives. I was doing just that, looking through baby photos of myself and pining for that time where I was satisfied with less, and worried about less. And as I was filtering through photos, I found a particularly cute picture of me lying on the floor, drool coming out of my mouth, and I paused there looking at my face. My nose. My nostrils were flared out beyond belief--I had a cow nose! No wonder they all called me Moo, I looked like a baby cow! Oh well, the picture was still cute. My life wasn't ruined. Actually, I thought it was funny.

I had my first baby 8 weeks ago today! In these 8 weeks, I've already learned alot. The most important thing is how valuable humor is....I deal with heavy things in my life by seeing the humor in them. Parenthood is an overwhelmingly huge job. But it's also hilarious. Some things are naturally humorous: Fact: babies fart at inoportune times (i.e. quiet churches). Other things you need to see the humor in to maintain sanity: finding yourself at 4 am covered in milk and having to change your pajamas--either from projectile vomit after a long nursing, or because those cheap nursing pads are so pathetic, you might as well stuff a diaper in the bra of your tank top and go back to sleep (done it).

The goal of this blog is to be a place where parents can share the humor of parenthood, and people looking to parenthood can have a fun, real idea of what it's like. Babies are a huge responsibility, but they are side-splittingly funny as well. My daughter kicks, snorts and flares her little cow nose just like I did and rather than fret that she doesn't smile demurely like a Gerber baby, I laugh and call her "Baby Moo".