WTF is wrong with me?

Anyone who watches "Modern Family" remember that episode where Cam is jealous that Lily is giving all her attention to Mitchell and as he tries to elbow his way back into her favor, he inadvertently keeps causing her to get hurt? Like, he accidentally throws her into the pool; he gives her one of those motorized mini cars and she drives it into something and gets hurt; he throws rice during a fake wedding and some gets in her eye, etc. Hilarious!

Not so funny when it actually happens to you. Especially if you're having a stressful day or you're anxious already for whatever reason.

To make a long story short because I have some shows to catch up on, I was at the zoo with my kiddo enjoying the Halloween stuff they had going on. At one point, I stopped to check and see if his diaper was poopy, and I stood him up on the bench of a table in a food area so I could better see down the back of his diaper. I didn't have a great hold on him with the one hand, and my other hand was pulling his pants away from his body, and in this five seconds my kiddo took a step back into nothingness, and he fell off the bench onto the ground under the table. Obviously he was terrified because he thought he was stepping onto a stable surface and there was nothing there but empty space, and we've all done that before with a stair step or something, so we know how startling that can be. Luckily he was bundled up in a thick hoodie so he didn't hit his head at all; he kind of just fell on his side and rolled a little. But in the split second I saw my poor baby hit the ground, I almost died of fright and panic. Of course he immediately started crying and I'm trying to pick him up as he's struggling to sit up to check him for injuries and apologizing profusely for not catching him and also holding back my own tears because I don't want to have a meltdown myself in the middle of the fucking zoo. After sobbing for a couple of minutes, he calmed down when his cousin gave him a little stuffed football and some pieces of cookie from her ice cream cup. I watched him walk around for a little bit to make sure he wasn't hurt, at which time I managed to hold back my tears of guilt and shame. I let my baby fall on the fucking concrete...who does that??

Fast forward to the next day, we're playing outside and he wants to put the basketball in the basketball hoop, like you do. I'm a short person. I have short arms. My kid is still pretty small, so he doesn't have long arms either. The idea crosses my mind to try and sit him on my shoulders so he can reach the rim. I raise him up over my head, but I can't quite get my head under him properly because he's wearing these stupid sweat pants with the drop crotch. Well, in my attempts to get him on my shoulders, I'm completely unaware that we're standing almost right under the backboard, so when I lifted him up over me, I accidentally hit his head on the corner of the backboard. Yeah, that's right; the pointy, sharp, METAL corner of the backboard. JESUS FUCKING CHRIST. It's a good thing I'm so weak, because it was just a slight bump, but the fact that it happened at all was crushing to me. I had just had a scare the day before with him falling at the zoo and now I was pulverizing his soft little head on a metal shard. MOM OF THE YEAR.

These aren't the first instances where the kiddo has fallen or had a head bonk on my watch, and of course they won't be the last. And these certainly weren't instances of life or death. All kids fall or trip or bonk heads or get scrapes or bruises. Those minor injuries throughout childhood are probably helping teach the little ones how to survive long enough to get to adulthood. I just couldn't help but feel like I failed at being a mom in those moments, and the thought of that brought me to tears and stressed me the hell out.

Being a mom is hard. Some days are harder than others. I guess those days are what Target and wine are for. Cheers!

HBIC

Most of the time now, I feel like motherhood has turned me into a snarky bitch who's quick to attitude. Not to my kid, mind you, but to everyone else. Anyone else feel the same? Just me? #wifeoftheyear

Just be cool, man

A lesson I've learned since becoming a mom: you have to have a sense of humor about most things. And you have to accept that things are going to happen that you'd normally freak out about but you mostly just have to keep your cool for the sake of your kid and your own sanity. If you're as neurotic as me, that's a tall order.

In a recent post, I lamented about the fact that my kid got hand foot and mouth disease, and I mused about what affliction would befall him next. I specifically mentioned pinworms. And guess what? A couple of months after HFM was over with, I got a call from my kid's school. *DUN DUN* 

I was at work and had missed the call from school. When I listened to the vague voicemail message, I immediately panicked and figured my kid had gotten hurt. I called back, expecting them to tell me he fell and broke his arm or something. Instead, the secretary attempted to explain that while his diaper was being changed after a poop, his teacher saw something hanging out of his butt, and she had to pull it out. She then informed me it looked like some kind of worm. After mentally breathing a sigh of relief that my kid wasn't maimed, a fresh wave of dread washed over me as I came to realization that he probably had pinworms. I had read about pinworms before. I was disgusted by them in general and horrified by the methods you have to take to confirm that your kid has them. For those who don't know, it involves flashlights and tape and checking your kid's butthole at night. I know, right?

I explained to the secretary that it was maybe pinworms and quickly commented that I had read it's a common occurrence in daycare settings, at which point she informed me that she'd never heard of them and that another administrator who had worked there for 20 years had never seen anything like it. Awesome, thanks ladies. The secretary informed me that they saved the worm so I could take a look at it. I told the secretary I would call my kid's doc to see what to do, hung up the phone and proceeded to internally melt down. As I said before, I had already read up on pinworms and knew what was in store for me. But I called the doc and spoke with the nurse a couple of times. I decided that after work I would hit the pharmacy and get the OTC med, which actually sounded pretty simple; one dose and then a follow up dose a couple weeks later. Pretty easy for such a disgusting malady. 

Fast forward to later in the evening after my kid has gone to bed. I'm getting ready to head out to the pharmacy to pick up meds, and I thought "lemme just take a quick gander at that worm they saved for me." I put some gloves on, open the plastic bag up and proceed to unwrap the paper towels and baby wipes that were stuffed in the bag. Obviously since they collected the specimen during a poopy diaper change, it was super pleasant to be pawing through a bunch of shit-stained wipes. Eventually I got to the worm in question. While it certainly looked like a little, white-ish, grub-like worm, I quickly realized with immense relief that it was definitely not a pinworm. Looked nothing like it. And then I recalled that the night before, my kid had zucchini noodles with his dinner. And I realized that's exactly what this was. A fucking zucchini noodle. Oh. Em. Gee. See, this is why a sense of humor is a necessary quality in a mom. 

I don't think I've ever been more relieved in my life, other than maybe when my kid was born healthy. With the giddiness of a fucking school girl, I broke the good news to my husband that we, in fact, do not have to get our kid out of bed that night and put scotch tape on his butthole to collect pinworm eggs. Nor do we have to launder every single piece of fabric our kid has come into contact with. YESSSSS!!!!! 

Honestly, the most mentally-taxing part of the whole scenario of my kid having pinworms was the idea of having to get him up in the middle of the night, two nights in a row, to check his butthole. Anyone with any sense knows you don't wake a sleeping baby; well, I guess pinworms and a poopy diaper are the exceptions to that rule.