Dummy mommy

This 'mommy brain' business is wearing a little thin, but I have to say that when it's merely annoying, it's one thing - when it's outright dangerous, it's quite another.

I took Liam to the baby weigh-in yesterday to get a record for his seven month milestone. Unfortunately for me, I took Liam to the morning session, and the public health nurse was booked for the afternoon session. I should have known this. I used to know this. Nobody got hurt, but Liam was having a bad day, being happy and cheerful one minute and having outright screaming fits the next. (If this is teething then please Teething Fairy let him have a full set of choppers by tomorrow morning, because I want my happy baby back.) He hates putting on clothes and he hates getting buckled into his car seat, so it was really tempting fate to bundle him up and take him down there not once, but twice. As it turns out, he is up to 17lbs 9 oz, which means a gain of one full pound from last month. Up til recently he was gaining half a pound a month, and I have to admit, Chad called this one. A week or two ago he asked, don't you think Liam is looking chubby these days? I didn't think so, but Chad was convinced that the rolls are accumulating again rather than receding, and he blames it on me stuffing too much food down Liam's throat now that he's onto the solids. (My response? If a few tablespoons of oatmeal and prunes are making Liam fat now, then God help him, because it's only going to get worse once he gets into the pizza and Doritos like his parents.)

Later in the day I had another scatterbrained episode, one that could have ended much worse. I brought home a poinsettia and set it on a table, never thinking that Liam would get hold of it. But get hold of it he did. After a few quiet moments last night I went to see what he was up to, and he had scooted over to said table in his (yes, illegal) walker - conveniently at the exact same height - and there was a third of a poinsettia plant in his fist and in tiny pieces all over his tray. This prompted a frantic search of first his mouth and then (to be safe) the poison control website, where I found that a child may ingest up to 600 poinsettia leaves with no toxicity whatsoever. Funny - am I the only one who had always heard that these things were botanical death??

Having put this out there for the public to see and judge, I am sure that many of you are tsk-tsking me, probably none more so than the grandparents, who likely wish they could snatch the little guy away from me for fear that he won't live to see his first birthday under my care. In my defense, let me say that I did (before we brought out the walker) do the inspection of the entire house, moving things at walker height out of his reach, getting rid of choking hazards, etc. I thought to do this with our current possessions, and just forgot to repeat the procedure with our new acquisitions.

Let me also say that Liam has made it to seven months with no injuries, no falling off the change table, no cracking his skull open, no animal bites or infectious diseases or bathwater-induced burns. And, I'm sure that one of these days, one of these tragedies will befall us, and he is resilient enough that he will probably be just fine, although I will feel absolutely terrible when it does happen. I am lucky that our first near-miss turned out to be a non-incident, and I will try to be more careful in the future. If, the next time you come over, there is a web of safety gates strung everywhere and safety latches on anything that moves, you will know why.

(One bad thing about Liam riding in the shopping cart now: he pilfers my groceries. It's the pizza and Doritos that he's after.)