Why I should never be left alone with anyone under the age of eighteen.

Sigh. So, okay. Here’s what happened.

Yesterday, shortly after dinner. Henry was in dreamy, reflective mode, standing up on the window seat in our living room, gazing at the cars and flotsam. This is a narrow seat that he’s never left alone on, as he could immediately slip and fall, causing grave injury to his person. (Note the foreshadowing! NOTE IT!)

Anyway, I was of course sitting right there, right next to him, my legs stretched out across the seat as he pressed his body against the window. He was absentmindedly kissing the window and he was being so cute and so unusually still that I grabbed the camera off the coffee table and started taking pictures. Of course, while clicking away, I let go of him. And then. Then. He looked at the camera, grinned, shouted “Boom!” which is his way of saying, “Watch me comically throw myself down!” and—boom—he threw himself down. Only his butt landed on nothing--remember how I said how narrow the seat was? Remember?—because his butt was headed straight for the floor, but before his butt could reach its destination, his poor little skull cracked against the brutal coffee table edge, and OH MY GOD WHO TOLD ME I COULD HAVE A KID?

For a millisecond he lay there, staring up at me like, why am I down here, wasn’t I up there? and in that millisecond I thought, he’s not making a sound, he’s a vegetable, his brain has been pureed and then he started wailing, and I scooped him up and tried to comfort him as only an idiot-mother can, and I tried to figure out what to do and I couldn’t remember a damn thing, including my husband’s cell phone number, and all I could do was babble idiot words of idiot comfort to my poor trusting child. Miraculously, after ten minutes of unadulterated weeping he wiped his eyes and asked to read a book, so of course we did, me quizzing him on the name of every animal on every page, as if he might have lost the giraffe-identifying lobe of his brain.

So, in the end, everything was fine, Henry’s fine, we’re fine, tra la la. There’s not even a bump on his head. Everything’s fine, except I’M NOT FINE, I’m a total wreck still. I’m having flashbacks of the feeling of his little legs landing on my legs and then slipping away from me, stupid me with my stupid camera; I’m still watching him slip off me and I’m not reaching forward and dropping the goddamn camera and I hate myself. And the worst part is, I have a picture of that big grin he had on his face, the joyful get-a-load-of-this grin he gave me, one second before he discovered that his mother sucks.

On an unrelated topic, while searching the web for a good brain chart to link to, I found the kitty paintings of a schizophrenic artist. First the kitties are weird and THEN THEY’RE SO MUCH WEIRDER. Go see. I don’t know, though—I think the psycho kitties are less frightening than the “normal period” kitties. What does that say about me?

Comments

[jilbur]

1. holy shit. I don't know if it makes you feel any better, but every mother in the universe (and many other mothers with whom I am personally intimate who reside in various alternative universes) has at least one story like that, and usually several. So let us all hold hands in our sororial suckitude, amen. I am just profoundly grateful for all the lucky outcomes from these episodes.

2. I think the psycho kitties are less frightening than the “normal period” kitties. What does that say about me?
Umm, that you're just like me? But that is probably mighty cold comfort. Believe me, you never, ever asked to be like me. Stage 3 looks exactly like a Tibetan god.

[erin]

a couple of the "psychotic" kitties are quite beautiful, especially #4. you can see the similarity between schizophrenia and the influence of LSD in those drawings.

[sac]

I have a few of those stories as well, so fathers aren't immune. Luckily, I am half-Irish and passed down the gene that gives us unnaturally large and diamond-hard heads, so that cracks form in the pavement and not on my sons' skulls.

[bluepoppy]

Wait. nNrmal kitty pictures = bland, Hallmark shit. Schizo kitty pictures = wild, inspired

Does this mean artists aren't artists until they are schizo?

[Betsy, as in Sarah's aunt]

Alice dear. Get Arnica gel. Go to the nearest health-related or semi-savvy holistic store, and buy Arnica gel. It comes in ointment and gel (and, actually, tablets) but I like the gel; it's soothing and cooling. All through my kids' toddler lives, when banging their foreheads and chins and skulls was a constant, we couldn't live without the Arnica. It really does lessen the swelling and the bruising and the pain.
Probably you knew this already.
xoxoxo

[Julia S]

Hey, I did the exact same thing. No, really, minus the window-seat-as-balcony scene. Patrick couldn't really stand up and he was precariously balanced on a chair and I grabbed the camera 'cause he was just so damned cute and... whack! His head hit on the corner of an old steamer trunk, which was a baby hazard in its own right but looked great with the couch, leaving not just a mark but a splinter. A splinter of wood in his little pink scalp that I had to leave like an enormous scarlet letter : I for Ineptitude.

He's fine. He likes to draw cats that look like Jimi Hendrix, but all toddlers go through that hallucinatory phase right?

Henry is fine. You'll be fine. Shush. There there. Pat pat...

[Melissa]

Something like that has happened to me so many times I can't even give you a good story about it anymore. My children will sue me one day. I mean that.

==============================
Note in my comment to me:
Schizo Cat Stage #5 looks exactly like my living room rug. Seriously.

[the mighty jimbo]

kids are largely indestructible as far as i can tell. i think this is the start of the "look ma, no hands" phase. and really, it only gets worse.

just wait till he asks to ride his bike off the roof into the pool.

or a skateboard off a stair well.

or maybe that was something only my friends did.

my advice, invest in a good health plan.

[lizardek]

I was sitting on our bed drying my hair while my 10 month old crawled around a bit in front of me. Then he zipped over to the end of the bed, and before I could react, he sat up facing me, with his butt on the very edge and tipped over backwards and FELL OFF THE BED. WHILE I was DRYING my HAIR!!

He landed on a padded footstool that was placed just like it was meant to be there, and the 2 seconds of eternity-slo-mo time that it took me to reach him was agonizing, only to find him lying there looking straight up at me like you said, "WTF? I was up there, now I'm down here." I swear if he hadn't seen me just then, he wouldn't have cried, but the look on my face must have triggered the wail.

This was 6 years ago, and I can still remember every second.

[Martha]

It happens to the best of us. (Not that I'm the best, or anything.) The solution at our house: put a Dora The Explorer bandaid somewhere on the child's body after any injury, and all is good instantaneously. (Note: if injury is on child's head under the hair and is not bleeding or anything, it suffices to put the Dora bandaid on the arm or the leg. It's the bandaid that counts, not the location.)

[Sarah]

You do not suck as a mother. You've simply enabled Henry to learn a valuable lesson about gravity. Now he knows! It was like a little toddler science experiment. He's gained the Action Knowledge of where his butt might land when he's launching it off the window seat.

God. I can only imagine the horror you must have felt. Did I tell you that I hit my daughter's head against the edge of the kitchen cabinet when I was removing her from her very first bath? My daughter's poor, delicate, fontanelled head. I think these pains we accidentally cause or allow to happen to our kids are the universal guilt pains of motherhood. (call Hallmark! stick that on a coffee mug!)

[debl]

I still remember hearing my aunt's horrifying story (stop reading now, Betsy, because you may have mercifully blocked it out of your memory) of her toddler son sitting on the kitchen counter and being left unheld for a split second, during which he hurtled himself headfirst onto an OPEN DISHWASHER RACK. Just picture all the hard wire-like jabber prong thingys dishwashers have. Terrifying!

Of course, the kid was okay. It's way scarier to witness than to actually have it happen to yourself, I figure.

[i.e.]

I don't like the first cat pictures at all - they remind me of "dogs playing poker" But I really like the psycho cats.

[alice]

It was all worth it, because now I have in my lexicon the term "jabber prong thingys" and I'm KEEPING IT.

[scott]

I don't want to laugh at the thought of jabber prong thingys skewering mini-Dylan or Liam-- but doesn't it kind of remind you of when Flash "Sam J. Jones" Gordon threw that guy Klytus onto that bed of spikes, resulting in comical, deely-bopper-esque eye poppage? Huh...huh? Good times...

[debl]

scott, it's like you're speaking another language to me here. (p.s. I think it was Dylan.)

Both sets of cat pictures have their own joys, but the psycho ones would make way better tattoos.

[scott]

Yeah, I admit it: my lame movie reference demeans us all. Damn you, Sam J. Jones...!

(All this because I don't favor cat art.)

[Mother who watched her son fall down the stairs]

Buster Keaton's father used to literally mop the floor with him when he was barely old enough to walk. And look how much wisdom and hilarity Buster brought to us as a nation. See? I'm making a connection here for you. See?

[MartyMcSorely]

yer fuckin' weird

[mike]

notice how the "normal" kitties all exist within a context where the schizo ones are isolated from a context...

interesting

[FrumDad]

I only have this second hand, but if G were online regularly, she'd share this.

She had to run downstairs to get some laundry, etc. from the basement, so G put Rachel in the exer-saucer thingie, which amuses her and (more importantly for our purposes) confines her to a single, baby-safe locale.

Or so she thought.

Seems Rachel has been watching closely, and managed to climb *up* out of the exersaucer (using a nearby table leg for the vertical assist), *stand* (sort of) on the lip of said exersaucer (with the toys and the nice mirror and other things that are not! for standing on! at all!)

I really attribute malice to this last part. I know my daughter, and yes, she is this clever.

She waited for G to be at the top of the stairs. In visual range, but way too far away to do anything effective... and then executed a perfect triple-lindy face plant.

The subtext being: "Wow, where'd you get your parenting license? Cracker-Jacks Box?"

She's okay. And G's started to listen more seriously my suggestions re the use of super-glue as parenting aid.

--FD

[KT]

Christ, I so totally did that the other day. My daughter's 8 months old and we've been napping together on my HUGE (I mean, King sized huge!) bed for weeks now, together. Mom's tired, scoop baby and baby toys, deposit baby in center of bed, mom curls up on one end of bed. Baby plays nicely. Mom goes to sleep.

Last week it was - mom goes to sleep, mom is rudely awakened by sickening thump and long, LOUD silence before blood-curdling scream issues from baby who is suddenly on the floor amid daddy's unwashed laundry.

Mom teleports off the bed and over to the other side of the bed to scoop poor terrified wailing probably-broken-arms-and-legs baby into her arms and whisper "Oh, oh oh..."

No bump. No bruise. Ten minutes and a bit of apple juice later, she's fine. Will probably live to crawl off the bed many many times.

[ooo da horrah]

mine is 7 now --- so let me reflect on the harm we have allowed to happen inadvertently:

Whilst eating at the dinner table as a toddler, stood up in our high-backed dining room chair and proceeded to fall over backward and clonk head loudly and horrendously on our tile floor - said chair was right in betwixt of mommy and daddy who watched in slow motion horror and could do nothing. Screams from all, much cradling and angst, he was fine.

Age three or so, FIRST time left overnight with grandmother (or anyone else for that matter), he was crawling across her glass dinette table and it tipped - he crashed to floor and glass crashed all around him. She took him to ER for stitches on his head and face. We were out of town at a friends wedding having a drunken blast. I was then traumatized about leaving him anywhere.
For all of about two months. ((Now I'm like, go play outside and quit buggin!))

As a 4 yr old, he was making a bridge from couch to coffe table repeatedly with a couch cushion. Mommy, walking by, said stop that, you will get hurt. He did it again, the cushion slipped and he face-planted: the bridge of his nose against hard mosaic-tiled edge of yon coffee table - lots of blood and screaming, only a slight scar now.

May the force of self forgiveness be with you - and all parents ;)

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