Monday, March 07, 2005

Need to feel better about yourself? Stop here!

On the way home from the store today I had to stop off at the neighbor's house. You see, last Thursday I left Vivian, (who was sick as a dog) home with her Dad and walked with Isaac up to see the neighbor. The neighbor (Suzanne) has two boys, Tate and Riley. Riley has asthma. They have to be really careful that Riley does not catch a cold, as this could trigger an attack.

Why would I take my germ-infested child to their house, then, you ask? Good question. The thing is, Isaac was not sick on Thursday. Not even remotely. And I thought that Vivian was simply not over the cold she had had earlier. I didn't think it was a new germ. Since Isaac was definitely over his cold from earlier, I figured it would be fine.

Until Saturday, when he started coughing. And now he's got as much snot as Viv. So I had to go to the neighbor's house to apologize for possibly infecting her son with another cold virus. Oy.

We stopped, and Suzanne and her boys happened to be out front. I got out of the car to talk to her (fortunately her boys are showing no signs of sickness yet, cross your fingers). After a few minutes I rolled down Isaac's window so she could say hi. And when I looked in, I noticed Vivian was practically crawling out of her carseat.

How is this possible, you ask? Good question. When I got to the car with the groceries, I had Vivian in the bjorn. Isaac was in the shopping cart. First I got Viv out of the bjorn and into the carseat, but because I didn't want to leave Isaac for long in the shopping cart unsupervised, I just plopped her in the seat, thinking I'd buckle her up after I got Isaac in his. You can imagine what happened next. Thank god we made it home without crashing.

(Want to know what's worse? This isn't the first time it has happened. This is the 3rd time. )

We finally get home and it's almost noon, so I start fixing lunch for the both of them. Vivian is acting really fussy and can't get enough food. "Jeez, Viv, what's the hurry?", I think,--and that's when I remember I haven't fed her since breakfast. Usually I nurse her when she wakes up, feed her breakfast, then nurse her again after her nap, then feed her lunch. Today I forgot to nurse her when she woke up.

So before noon today, I had already fessed up for needlessly exposing an asthmatic child to a cold virus, carelessly put my daughter in danger, and starved her for no reason.

This is what happens when you are sleep-deprived. Or when you are just an incompetant mother. Or both.

Surely whatever motherly sin you made today, you can't beat that. And if you can, hey--give it time. It's only noon here! I've still got 7 more hours to fill with mother fuck-ups!

1 comment:

Psycho Kitty said...

Oh, honey. I'm not laughing *at* you, right, I'm laughing *with* you. Right? Right??