care

In the morning, before Squirt took his tumble, I had dropped a plastic container holding spag bol (well, something like it, anyway) on the kitchen floor. It cracked & spilled. Of course. I tried to clean it before little man crawled through the dregs, and in a 'mental note: clean pants later' kind of way I succeeded. Also, he was wearing one of his old shapeless onesies because I had had to change him three times the day before, for various reasons, and that's what was left. And, as I had spent the morning cleaning the attic and spare room, I was still in 'shower later' mode, which isn't pretty either.

So Squirt took his spill and we had to get to the doctor's office quickly. And that's how we looked. Squirt in his sauce-stained pants and his overly washed onesie, me with my unwashed hair in a careless ponytail. I had only just taken the trouble to put on 'real pants' instead of the tracksuit bottoms I was wearing! I'm painfully getting why old ladies tell you to always wear clean underwear because you don't know what the day will bring. It's not limited to underwear. Really.

And then Squirt started 'talking' to the doctor's assistent. And I said, as a sort of joke, 'oh, that's normal, he always talks like that!' The guy looked at me critically and asked me what Squirt was saying, then. I told him I didn't know; he's only 16 months old, and while he has a vocabulary of 50-odd words (which is impressive for his age!) I can't make sense of everything that comes out quite yet. Which was okay, because the assistent had thought Squirt was older than that. But still.

And then what happened yesterday!
Man took Squirt out on the train - a free ride to and from the town where he works, just for fun - and decided to change diapers in one of the bathrooms at his workplace. It was a bathroom for the disabled, so it had an alarm pull cord installed. You can connect the dots, I suppose ;-) Squirt happily pull-pull-pulling the cord while Pappa was obliviously bent over naked baby bum when security came bursting through the door using a passkey...

It all adds up! Had the proposed Electronic Child File been in place yet, I'm sure Squirt would have been flagged for showing possible signs of neglect AND abuse! That's how easily our efforts to be responsible parents can be misconstrued (hey, my kid might have fallen down the stairs, but I got him to a doctor real quick!!).

It has been quite a week!