Bad Mother (or How to Harness the Power of a Toddler)

My house is baby-proofed. It is not toddler proofed.

But the good news is there doesn’t seem to be any lasting harmful effects from Monday’s baby breaking incident. (Seriously folks, thank you so much to all of you who shared your own baby dropping stories. It truly made me feel less inept.)

Both boys are back to warp speed in a determination to live up to their names – Search and Destroy.

They climb now. Successfully. No lamp is safe. And electrical socket plugs? Those may deter the curious fingers of an infant. But they are no match for a dedicated recon team composed of twin toddlers.

It was a long week. So I was in process of brewing my third or fourth cup of coffee. (It was a light night.)

As I unloaded the dishwasher, I calmly requested that neither child play with the knives. Because that is good parenting. But mostly I hadn’t had enough coffee to stay awake to explain *that* story when the inevitable no-good came of it.

Several minutes later I corralled the muppets into the gated living room and set about putting the dishwasher pieces back together. (It was two against one. Not a fair fight. I was distracted – putting away kid-unfriendly knives.)

Finally I was ready to close out this week – just chilling with my boys and brew.

Destroy toddled over.

He was very interested in my cup of coffee. (Don’t worry. It wasn’t steaming. When you have small children you get very used to cold coffee.)

He wanted some. And he did say please.

In my efforts to regain my mother of the year title, I tilted the cup back just enough so the lukewarm liquid just barely touched his lips. He was thrilled.

They really are looking more like little boys every day. My babies are all grown up.

Jon: Did you just give our son coffee?!

Me: Just a little. He likes it.

Jon: Why would you give a toddler caffeine? Before bed.

Me: It’s not like they’ve never had it before. They used to have a shot in their gavage feeding every day. They started life with a daily breast milk espresso.

Jon: …

Me: Mother. Of. The. Year.

Jon: I don’t even know how to respond to that.

I smiled and kissed Destroy on his little unharmed head. Then we snuggled calmly and quietly. Preemie parenting advice from the pros.

You’re welcome.

3 Comments

Filed under Food, Humor, Seriously?

3 Responses to Bad Mother (or How to Harness the Power of a Toddler)

  1. Gramma J

    I’m with Jon on this one.

  2. Joanne Hamann

    Hey, if he went to bed with no problems, then it’s no harm, no foul – but are you going to need to get a Keurig machine for him???

  3. I don’t see that a tiny drop would cause a problem – I’m with you on this one! (However, half a mug of strong tea does really funny things to a cat… ask me how I know.)

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