Learn from my Parenting Fail

Parenting fails are my favorite thing. I love reading and hearing about other people’s, and I like telling people about mine. Every so often on the blog I’ll share a story from my (very extensive) Parenting Fail Vault. A huge part of my mission is to make mom’s feel less alone. We’re all in this together and we all have our moments of outright mayhem.

SO…we’re at the park with our new friend Lisa, who I met in baby class, and her son.

Sidenote: If you haven’t looked into your city’s Early Childhood Family Education classes, (or ECFE) I HIGHLY recommend them. It might be the second most thing I’m passionate about in parenting, besides keeping it totally real and having low expectations. These classes were a lifesaver, especially in the very early months of being a mom.

We have a good time and now it’s time to go. Lisa is putting her baby in the car, I’m putting Tristan in. Tessa is running around the park screaming about how she doesn’t want to go home yet. So I put T-man in the car seat and I’m like, what is all over the buckle? Oh, awesome, it’s poop. I pick him up and poop is EVERYWHERE. All over his back, all over the seat. WHEN DID THIS HAPPEN?!

Mom friends are the best kind of friends

I’m holding him at arm’s length and luckily Lisa hasn’t left yet. “Lisa, HELP!” She’s like oh shit and immediately produces hundreds of plastic bags [weird the things we moms keep in our cars] that we put his clothes in and together we use approximately 1,904 wipes to clean him off in the parking lot.

I have poop all over me and whenever I lean close to wipes him, more poop transfers on him from my shirt. So I really had no choice. Now, I don’t know Lisa that well but I was like what else am I going to do? I take off my shirt. I’m not wearing my cutest bra but luckily not my grossest either. I kind of wipe off the car seat. I’m only using baby wipes so it’s not that great, and I put Tristan back in the car butt naked because of course I have no diapers, just thousands of wipes. I stand behind the open car door so as not to alarm all of the other park patrons because I’m half naked and I’m not trying to get arrested, and I yell for Tessa. She is dancing to music only she can hear and is completely ignoring me.

I just want to get in the car at this point

Finally, she comes over but WHERE ARE YOUR SHOES?! “I dunno…” Jesus, I do NOT have time for this. I’m about to forget the shoes when I see them. Shit. Now I have a decision to make.

They’re not the nicest shoes…but they fit…they were cheap…they’re brown they go with everything. We really need those shoes. Fuck it. I’m sprinting through the park towards these shoes. As I’m running back I notice a grandma with her 2 grandchildren. I am a chronic oversharer so I feel the need to explain to these strangers why I’m running through the park in a bra at noon. “My son pooped. Got all over me. Daughter forgot her shoes. haha. Have a nice day.” She yelled something back that sounded like some sort of comraderie, I wasn’t really listening, and then I got back in the car and gunned it home.

I stink like poop, the car stinks like poop, Tessa is yelling about the poop smell. I’m just praying we don’t get pulled over but honestly if a cop saw my situation I probably would have gotten a police escort. At the very least a head nod and told to carry on ma’am.

I throw one kid in the bath, I throw the other one some lunch. I spent their naptime taking a q-tip and cleaning poop out of the seat buckles. I can’t tell you how gross it is to clean poop out of crevices with a q-tip.

And then I showered. Twice.

CHECK OUT THESE RELATED BLOG POSTS “HOW TO KEEP YOUR MOTIVATION AS A STAY AT HOME MOM” AND “EASY AND PRACTICAL SELF CARE TIPS FOR MOMS”

Of course, now I want to hear about a parenting fail of yours! Comment below so we can all commiserate together!