Reason #35 – I’m a bad mom because I’ll never carry Mini Post-Its.
Reason #35 – I’m a bad mom because I’ll never carry Mini Post-Its.
Jul 13Parenting tips drive me up the walls 98% of the time . The remaining 2% are people who actually advise me to pour myself a large one and put my feet up while they mind my baby. Now THAT is advice!
On the bright side, the ever-available parenting advice available on the Internets makes me feel confident I will reach 1000 reasons, because I am SO not following any of it. Bring on the guilt trips. I’m not afraid.
I used to be a great fan of Moms Who Need Wine (totally my kind of site), and I was a faithful reader of their sister site Momicillin too, until I came across a recent Tip of The Week that almost left me in tears. It was THAT unforgivable insulting traumatic.
I have been obsessing over it for days. It keeps me up at night. I haven’t talked about it to anyone till now, so consider this a major disclosure.
This is what the ladies at Momicillin Tips did to me:
Have you ever put a small child on a public potty — the kind with the automatic flusher — and had it flush while your child is sitting on it? Only to send him/her into a state of sheer panic? Well here’s a tip to ensure it doesn’t happen again. Carry a pad of post-it notes with you in your bag. When your child gets on the potty, put a post-it note over the infrared sensor. The sensor will be fooled, and your trip to the potty will be freak-out free.
I have spent nights awake worrying because I’m supposed to enter a public loo with my freakishly-fast-and-strong baby boy (never mind that he’s nowhere near loo trained) and somehow have enough hands to:
- Put my handbag somewhere safe.
- Put the diaper bag somewhere safe.
- Keep my boy somewhere safe, and preferably off the floor.*
- Get my C’s trousers down (OK, so I won’t wee this time EITHER. It’s OK, I have a 3-gallon bladder. Or will soon at this rate.)
- While grasping C firmly, fish on my handbag for post-its. Find none.
- Scour one side of the diaper bag. No post-its.
- Apply one-handed judo grip to increasingly restless boy.
- Scour other side. No post-its.
- Frantically search all jeans’ and cardigan’s pockets for post-its. Nope.
- Get weed on by a justifiably FURIOUS boy. Who is otherwise an angel.
- Have the loo go off on its own and frighten the lights out of me.
- Find post-its. In C’s mouth.
Dear People Giving Out Mom Tips: Are you even moms? Have you already, from the vantage point of being parents of 6 or 10-year-olds (which from my mom-of-toddler perspective looks like Val-effing-halla) forgotten what it’s like when they cannot be left unsupervised for long enough to put a post-it note over the infrared sensor? Am I getting ahead of myself and reading the wrong advice?
Screw that.
I will not – repeat NOT – be buying post-its any time soon. The only mom advice I’ll take from now on will be to try their highly recommended La Crema 2008 Pinot Noir. Cheers!
*Coming Soon: “I’m doing it to boost my son’s immune system.“
Good grief! No Post-Its for me – they’d simply be gumming up the inside of my bag. We don’t go in for a lot of automatic flushing here in Oz – yet. And by the time we get there, my boys will be more than old enough to cope. Phew! Dodged a live one there.
life in a pink fibro recently posted Preschool at the Disco
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ofthesea Reply:
December 7th, 2010 at 8:38 pm
I have always known I live in the wrong side of the world. And C does have family in Oz. Hmm…..
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Updated Bad Mom Post:Reason #35 – I’m a bad mom because I’ll never carry Mini Post-Its.. Read it now! http://1000reasonsimabadmom.com/reason-3...
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altait Reply:
December 8th, 2010 at 2:14 am
@Mofthesea More like ‘crap tip no#1011. Are they for real?
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Mofthesea Reply:
December 8th, 2010 at 2:15 am
@altait Amazingly, they were. They even wrote back to me about that post! Fortunately the lawsuit was averted ;)
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altait Reply:
December 8th, 2010 at 2:17 am
@Mofthesea You do get the best follow-up of anyone I know. :-)
Mofthesea Reply:
December 8th, 2010 at 2:18 am
@altait Follow-up? Whaddaya mean?
altait Reply:
December 8th, 2010 at 2:44 am
@Mofthesea Didn’t you have a group of moms wanting to beat you up on a forum earlier this year? Or was that another M? #followup
Mofthesea Reply:
December 8th, 2010 at 4:28 am
@altait Oh yeah, that was me. But it seems I went tame – haven’t had a whiff of controversy in months. Thanks for the vote! :)
altait Reply:
December 8th, 2010 at 4:30 am
@Mofthesea Disappointing. #controversydrivestraffic And you’re welcome. :-)
Mofthesea Reply:
December 8th, 2010 at 4:36 am
@altait I know! I keep trying to be rude, but no success. Maybe my readers have become jaded!
altait Reply:
December 8th, 2010 at 2:45 am
@Mofthesea PS: Voted for your FB page. Good luck! :-)
Seriously? Carry post-it’s for covering the eye ball of self-flushing public toilets? #@%& that. I am a small person. The damn things go off underneath me when I shift to the right to pull on the toilet paper.
Scenario: Squatting in front of either of mine while they sat on public toilet. Me: looking into their some what frightened eyes as they waited. Me: “Hurry up! It’s gunna get you!” “Don’t move, it’s gunna go off!” Them: looking around with huge frightened eyes as if trying to find room between me and the walls to tuck and roll when said toilet blasts while they sit. SWOOOOOSH!!!! Me: “Ahhh!!! It got you!!!” Me: “Bahahahahahahahahaha!” While looking straight into frightened child’s eyes. Child: “Giggle giggle giggle”. Miss all of that because a post-it was covering the toilet’s eye ball? No effin way!
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ofthesea Reply:
November 21st, 2010 at 7:19 pm
Tuck and roll! BAHAHAHAA! I hadn’t heard that since… um… a few hours before I got pregnant with C? A while, anyway.
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Laughed so hard at the description of the bathroom trip that I nearly weed myself :)
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ofthesea Reply:
October 13th, 2010 at 6:45 am
Did you follow the link to L8Enough’s? She cracks me up big time!
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Epilogue: having written about it, it haunts me no longer. I sleep soundly at night, without a single post-it in my handbag.
ofthesea recently posted Reason 54 – I refuse to give my baby Early Stimulation
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Thank you! Share share share!
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I absolutely love this post!! Sharing it!!
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Been there many a times. In fact every time we go use the bathroom, whether in public or someone else’s house she asks if it flushes itself. We now just drape 2 sheets of toilet paper over the sensor and all is well. But man, what I wouldn’t do, to erase that 1st time, wasn’t prepared for it at all!
Kat recently posted Finally back
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ofthesea Reply:
July 14th, 2010 at 1:18 pm
I still have so much to look forward to! Panic attacks in public loos!
Tho knowing my fearless boy he will probably be the one to scare the bejesus out of the autoflusher…
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Oh Dear! We didn’t, by any means, mean to be causing nightmares with this one! As a mom, myself, of a just-potty-trained-not-quite-3-year-old, believe me, I get the juggling act. But I also get that if that flusher goes off while said 3-year-old is sitting on the potty ONE MORE TIME, I will never (and I mean NEVER) get her on a public potty again. Which is a much greater problem then trying to rustle a post-it out of my over-stuffed bag.
Hopefully by the time your freakishly-fast-and-strong boy is old enough to go to the loo by himself, he’ll be old enough to stand next to the potty long enough for you to fish out the stickies. Or maybe he’ll actually like the great flush of doom while he’s sitting there, pants around his ankles (Old Faithful!) … in which case, you can let him eat the notes.
Either way, we hope we didn’t REALLY scare you away from reading. Did we?
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ofthesea Reply:
July 14th, 2010 at 9:38 am
Of course you didn’t. I was just being
over dramatica bit emphatic, as usual.That said, maybe I should play hard-to-get and hope for a bribe of wine? …No? Well, it was worth a shot.
And if you ever have an opening in Momicillin for a terrible, terrible mom of a toddler, you know where to find me! ;)
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Momicillin Editor Reply:
July 14th, 2010 at 9:53 am
Send us some samples! I’d like to see the kind of articles you’d see yourself writing for us…
http://www.momicillin.com/write-for-us/
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ofthesea Reply:
July 14th, 2010 at 9:55 am
You have officially made my day. I’ll be sending you my best samples later today! :)
The post-it notes would TOTALLY be in my kids’ mouths, too.
Alex@LateEnough recently posted If Your Savings Account Doesn’t Factor In Therapy- You’re Probably Not A Parent
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very well written and man can i relate! i was juggling all sorts of stuff with ava at barnes and noble yesterdays. i have half a mind to write the editors myself and tell them exactly where they can put their post-its.
and you have two glasses for the wine, right?
saying hi from the red dress club. :)
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