Reason #194 – Clothes are more important to me than my son
Reason #194 – Clothes are more important to me than my son
Sep 14C and I went to a birthday party today – one of his playgroup friends turned 4, and they pulled all the stops to celebrate it in a local park with a great playground.
Since it was a Special Occasion (birthday! cake! photographs!) I decked C out in a gorgeous new shirt which I had been saving for a public appearance. It’s how the world works: those of us who see him every day are used to his stained, faded and ripped look. The nice stuff is for strangers.
C looked absolutely dashing in his new shirt. See for yourself:
Have you ever seen a handsomer lad?
Most of you know by now that C is rather prone to accidents, and by “prone” I mean he actively seeks out opportunities to maim, disembowel or disfigure himself. The kid is his own worst enemy, and all I can do is try to keep him alive until he’s old enough to buy his ticket to Pamplona and run the bulls.
Which is to say it took C all of 5 minutes to get in a tight spot with the monkey bars. Normally I wouldn’t have put down my drink, let alone interrupted my conversation, but I knew things were serious because C was not crying within seconds of the fall.
Enter Emergency Momma Mode:
Dash!
Pick boy up and check for injuries!
Damn! A busted lip!
Buckets of blood!
Aaaiieee!
I hooked C on my hip, cupped a hand under his chin and legged it for the nearest sink.
And then, what did I do? Did I clean his wounds? Did I hug him, kiss him, soothe him? Did I offer compassion and support?
Did I hell.
The first thing I did to my crying, bleeding child was to take his new shirt off so it would not get blood on it. And I did not start any first aid until the shirt was safe from blood, snot and water.
The boy was mended, re-dressed and back in the fray in no time, and we enjoyed the heck out of the party after that.
And the best part is that the shirt will live to see another day!
Wish I could say the same about my kid.
You are completely amazing. I just found your blog yesterday on facebook, and I have to confess I stayed up all night last night reading all of them and I laughed so hard outloud, i woke my kids up!! hahahaa!
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ofthesea Reply:
September 17th, 2011 at 9:52 am
Yay! Welcome! We can always use more good people around this blog!
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When I go to parties with P, I put the new clothes on while in the car the very last minute before we jump out of it…then i ask people to take pictures and only AFTER that I release P.
The clothes will be unusable within 5 minutes.
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ofthesea Reply:
September 14th, 2011 at 9:54 am
Wow, that is a great tip!
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I haven’t EXACTLY done this, but last weekend at the playground my daughter was climbing around under some of the equipment and when she came out there was a spider crawling on her. It had almost made it inside her jacket.
I very calmly brushed the spider off of her (read panicked and smacked her) and then proceeded to strip her down at the bottom of the slide to make sure the spider hadn’t worked it’s way into her shirt.
So I HAVE stripped her down in the middle of a play session, albeit for a different reason than you did. That said, I totally understand what you’re saying about the good clothes vs. home clothes and probably would have done the same thing. :)
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ofthesea Reply:
September 14th, 2011 at 9:55 am
Lol, I can totally picture it! I would have gone at it with a flip flop!
(And how bad is it that I am imagining the spiders from Cut the Rope?))
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