Lady Goo Goo………

Car-seat baby has a habit of putting everything in her mouth; pegs from the Guess Who game, bits of paper, stickers from the coveted sticker book collection, the convertor, rogue Cheerios that have rolled into the family room off of her highchair tray and Polly Pocket has been complaining several of her fanciest shoes have gone missing. Chloe.

Thankfully, Hanna and Ellie’s eclectic dressing style has rubbed off on Polly so she’s never concerned with whether or not her shoes match, if she’s wearing a zucchini top (Ellie-ism for bikini) with a wedding veil there are no complaints and her shoes never match, perhaps because Chloe has eaten half the pair.

This weekend while visiting my parents, Chloe crawled into the kitchen and was spotted throwing the magnets from the fridge. My Mom wandered in to see what kind of trouble she was getting into and noted that one of her magnets, something resembling a nesting doll used to have a small wooden ladybug glued to it and it was now missing. Chloe.

My Mom explained the wooden ladybug was about the size of half a lentil. Obviously she wasn’t aware of Chloe’s affinity for lentils or halvsies, what do you expect when you dress one up like a cute little ladybug? This girl eats plastic shoes for sport, she’s not turning her nose up at half a legume in a top-hat.

I guess I am expected to sift through the gift-wrapped feces in every Huggies she soils but to be honest, I have no intention of returning the ladybug so does it really matter if I ever find it?

It’s a reflection of how our parenting style has shifted from one child to the third. If Hanna had so much as looked in the direction of the ladybug we’d be up at emerge for an x-ray and would have an order of antibiotics on hand as a precautionary measure. The ladybug would have been tested for known bacteria and frozen for further review.

Now, I find people gasping when Chloe drops her chew toy on the floor at Starbucks and I hand it back to her before boiling it clean.

I don’t have time to weed my garden, I certainly don’t have time to turn my child’s diapers into a real life game of Operation or boil the Starbucks off of toys.

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