Wednesday, July 27, 2011

Our Parenting Skills

Note - the following event caused me to have a mild panic attack, but probably wasn't as dramatic as I make it sound. However, when retelling it to a good friend today, when I was finished I just lo0ked at her and said "Wow, we are awesome parents!"

Yesterday we spent the day in Nashville. Marlie's appointment to get her cast off wasn't until later in the afternoon - more on that later - so we went to Monkey's Treehouse (I was not impressed), had lunch at Five Guys, and then headed to the Galleria for a bit. After walking around for a bit, and convincing the girls that the rides that cost $0.75 each were way better than running around in bare feet in the mall playground with who knows what on other kids' feet (I'm not by any means a germaphobe, but at some point I have to draw a line on downright unsanitary!), the girls wanted to just go up and down the escalator one time before leaving. Harmless enough request, right?! Are you seeing where this is going?!?!!?

So Jayson has Evan in the stroller so they stand at the bottom . . . Marlie gets on and then I get on with Sam holding my hand behind me . . . somehow Samantha lets go, trips, and is now in the process of doing a faceplant on the escalator and not getting up as it is getting dangerously close to the bottom where all I see is her fingers heading for the opening . . . HOLY SHIT!!!!!!!! So what do we do - I start to run down and Jayson gets there way faster than I do and we do a quick handoff because, well, the escalator is still moving up. There you have it . . . I leave one child, who at this point still has a cast on her broken arm, to fend for herself, which by the way she doesn't , she tries to run down the up escalator after me . . . and Jayson leaves our 3 month old 15ft away in his stroller in the middle of the crowded mall . . . but we saved the one. We rock at this parenting thing!

Once I calmed down I wanted to walk away from the scene as quickly as possible. I'm not one to often care what others think . . . but can you imagine?! At least one person had to think, "Well now we know how the other one got a broken arm" ha! And the only thing I kept thinking was how you apply logic to this situation. Shouldn't it be a majority rule thing in most events?! Clearly not in this one since we abandoned 2/3 of our children! Yes, Samantha was probably in more danger . . . but that is questionable given Evan's inability to scream if a stranger came by and Marlie's lack of balance due to the fact that she was already down one limb . . .

After the near death experience (that is what it seriously felt like to me), we headed down to Children's and Marlie got her cast off. Jayson wanted to be the one in the room when they brought out the "tickler", aka - the saw! Marlie informed me today that it did not in fact tickle her at all! Then came the pins . . . everyone had been matter of factly saying how they would just take the pins out, like it was similar to taking off a bandaid. For the last month I have been thinking how much that would have to hurt - I'm talking 3 2in pins that are down through a whole arm of muscle, tissue, and cartilage - and they're sturdy enough to prop up a bone - AND it took a surgeon an hour and a half to put them in . . . but they're just gonna pull them out?!? Wow, all I have to say is I thought it was a miracle Jayson came out with his hearing in tact - through multiple walls across a very large office, I heard her screams, and the pitches they took when each pin came out . . . she was not happy when she came out. Well . . . we were told when we got home to take the mound of gauze off her arm and put bandaids over the holes the pins left - and they are holes! Understandably, she was FREAKING out about anyone touching her arm - so what do we do . . . we bust out the bribe I had planned weeks ago for this very occasion - new Tinkerbell jammies. For the first time ever, the bribe didn't work . . . oh, we got the bandaids on, but not because she accepted the bribe . . . it was weird, bribery has worked very well for us over our 5 years of parenthood . . . like I said - we are rockstar parents! :)

Since I am confessing about some highlights of our awesome skills - I may as well add a quick few. When Marlie was 6 months old I didn't buckle her in her stroller because I didn't think she'd go anywhere - she slid out onto the hardwood floor of Gap Kids and landed on her head. Right before Marlie turned 2 she locked herself in my car while she was buckled in the carseat and then dropped the keys - yes I gave her the keys, and yes my cell phone was in the car. Jayson arrived before I smashed in the windshield with a golf club - it was an hour and a half later :) When the girls were 3 and 1, there was an incident with the deck door and some attitudes - the girls then began the toddler version of fight club - Marlie came out with a black eye and Samantha with a bloody nose . . . we took pictures. Stellar parenting skills at work in all of the above events . . .

Of course, I joke about all of this . . . now . . . 5 years ago I thought I was the worst parent ever when Marlie fell out of that stroller (I cried in the middle of the mall) . . . but yesterday, once I calmed down, I knew it was an accident, and sometimes those are out of my control . . . even though we are such awesome parents . . .

These are our 3 children . . . and I am sure they are going to turn out to be totally well adjusted adults because, like I said, we totally rock at this parenting business! :)

1 comment:

eHawkins said...

I usually save your blog for my lunchtime break but I just had to read after your email. This makes you a good parent! You admit your mistakes and move on and that is a good parent. s***t happens, but you saved Samantha and nothing else happened so you do rock as parents!!