A friend of mine told me the other day that I should write a funny parenting book. I wanted to be flattered that she thinks I am funny. The reality is that the laughs that take place around here are the ones we have in response to the colossalness of our parenting blunders. Now, nothing unsafe happens to the baby, I promise. It’s just that we do things like catch spit-up in our mouths, forget baby wipes when we’re at the grocery store, etc. I wish the list of stupid things we do was short. It’s not.
Take this gem that happened a few months ago.
We were at a family birthday lunch with BF’s family when the air around baby clearly indicated that baby needed his diaper changed. We had traveled to the lunch in BF’s car and BF keeps his diaper bag in his car at all times so I had not brought my diaper bag. I turned to BF and said, “Hey, can you get me a diaper?” and he said sure. He dug around in his diaper bag for a minute and came back to me with a concerned look on his face. Subtly, he tried to tell me that he had used the last diaper with baby the day before and forgotten to fill his diaper bag back up. Trying to find a solution for the smelly baby, BF turned to his mom and tried to discretely ask her if she had any diapers. She didn’t. And BF wasn’t all that discrete. Sitting between BF and his mom was his sweet, sweet Nana who really is the cherry on top of all things good and pure in this world. And Nana heard him clearly.
“You didn’t bring diapers,” she asked incredulous.
“Nah, I forgot them, Nana.” BF told her.
And as baby started stinking up the whole place, Nana wondered aloud, “why wouldn’t you have brought some diapers? Wouldn’t you just carry diapers everywhere?”
Why, indeed, Nana. Because we’re trying to gather material for a funny parenting book because what other talents do we really have?
This is a good one, girl! Nana is priceless. I can’t help but think of what Granny says before we go somewhere, “If we forgot something, we’ll just BUY it!” But diapers have a different sort of urgency! 🙂
P.S. All humor aside, when you start taking baby on overnight trips make a checklist on your computer* of everything you need to take; you can update it as necessary. More importantly, print the list off and take it with you so you have it when you’re packing to return home. This way you won’t leave 1/2 of the monitor out of town or something!
*if your computer is working – hardy har har! 🙂
I need to credit my friend, and fan of yours, Alison M., who gave me that great idea!