More great moments in parenting
I'm typing this with one hand, so please ignore any typos.
As has been well-chronicled here, I'm a klutz. But today I set a standard for both clumsiness and idiocy that will be hard for even me to top.
One of our good friends came over with his daughter this AM, and we were walking back from the park when Mädchen started to get upset for no particular reason. Now, in that situation a child's mother might stop and try to talk to her, but not daddy...no, this called for distraction, and what could be more distracting than pretending to have a race? And it worked...the tears stopped.
At least the tears stopped until, at the end of the "race", I tried to run back up onto the sidewalk with her. It didn't really occur to me that in a jog stroller, if the front wheel isn't locked it can be prone to getting stuck. Sure enough, I hit our neighbor's driveway cut, and the front wheel immediately jammed. Since we were running at the time, the resulting momentum flipped her stroller upside down. Time pretty much stood in place as I watched our poor baby get flipped over...and then as I did a header over the fallen stroller and landed hard on the concrete (I'm guessing this isn't something a lot of moms have done).
Thankfully our friend was right there and immediately righted the stroller, plus she was strapped in well so while she had a scrape on her head and was understandably shocked and scared, she seemed to be OK (especially once Gretchen caught up with us--she didn't see any of it because we had run ahead--and took her in to comfort her).
Meanwhile, I started to notice my shoulder was hurting. A lot. But I wasn't going to complain because it was my own fault, and I was just so glad it was me instead of Mädchen. But when I realized I was supposed to be getting on a train to Philadelphia at 4:00pm (it was already noon) and the pain was getting worse, I decided that maybe a trip to Urgent Care was in order.
Six hours and a cancelled trip later, I arrived home with a sling on my arm and a diagnosis of a partially separated shoulder (not to mention a wounded ego, which didn't show up on the x-ray). Sweet Mädchen saw me and, having blissfully forgotten her own trauma, pointed at me and said "daddy owee."
This is yet another reason it might make sense to require men to get licenses before fathering children...
As has been well-chronicled here, I'm a klutz. But today I set a standard for both clumsiness and idiocy that will be hard for even me to top.
One of our good friends came over with his daughter this AM, and we were walking back from the park when Mädchen started to get upset for no particular reason. Now, in that situation a child's mother might stop and try to talk to her, but not daddy...no, this called for distraction, and what could be more distracting than pretending to have a race? And it worked...the tears stopped.
At least the tears stopped until, at the end of the "race", I tried to run back up onto the sidewalk with her. It didn't really occur to me that in a jog stroller, if the front wheel isn't locked it can be prone to getting stuck. Sure enough, I hit our neighbor's driveway cut, and the front wheel immediately jammed. Since we were running at the time, the resulting momentum flipped her stroller upside down. Time pretty much stood in place as I watched our poor baby get flipped over...and then as I did a header over the fallen stroller and landed hard on the concrete (I'm guessing this isn't something a lot of moms have done).
Thankfully our friend was right there and immediately righted the stroller, plus she was strapped in well so while she had a scrape on her head and was understandably shocked and scared, she seemed to be OK (especially once Gretchen caught up with us--she didn't see any of it because we had run ahead--and took her in to comfort her).
Meanwhile, I started to notice my shoulder was hurting. A lot. But I wasn't going to complain because it was my own fault, and I was just so glad it was me instead of Mädchen. But when I realized I was supposed to be getting on a train to Philadelphia at 4:00pm (it was already noon) and the pain was getting worse, I decided that maybe a trip to Urgent Care was in order.
Six hours and a cancelled trip later, I arrived home with a sling on my arm and a diagnosis of a partially separated shoulder (not to mention a wounded ego, which didn't show up on the x-ray). Sweet Mädchen saw me and, having blissfully forgotten her own trauma, pointed at me and said "daddy owee."
This is yet another reason it might make sense to require men to get licenses before fathering children...
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