The great humorist Jean Kerr's first book was entitled Please Don't Eat The Daisies. The point of the title, she explained, was that she had explicitly warned her sons not to "climb on the roof" or "drink cleaning fluid." However, she had never thought to tell them not to consume decorative flowers.
One day she noticed that her lovely table arrangement of daisies had, in fact, been eaten by her young sons.
Well, I had one of those situations the other day...
Madeleine and Meredith were taking a shower and I was monitoring the activity from the adjoining room. I walked into the bathroom and was greeted by this sight:
Madeleine was sitting in the sink, filled with water, operating a hair dryer.
I am surprised that the neighbors did not immediately call the police but I suppose screams do not carry well through brick and glass.
Well, there goes a freebie. (An incident that could result in death or severe injury that turns out ok) They say that all parents get a couple of freebies. Madeleine used up her first freebie by crawling off of the bed and plummeting to the floor head first about three days after we got home. I can still hear the thunk of her head hitting the hardwood floor.
So--Madeleine? Would you do me a favor? Please don't operate a hair dryer while sitting in a sink filled with water.
Thank you.
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11 comments:
Carumba!
Yikes! Angels must be watching over her.
Just screaming on your part?
Man, I hate it when they pull these stunts. The trick is to not kill the child while correcting their death-defying behavior.
ACK!!! WTF!?!
ACK! I thought by age 8 you could begin to stop worrying about things like that! How many grey hairs did that one account for?!
AHHHHH! I know something like that will happen to me one day! I'm glad to have found your blog. My husband & I are parents to a wonderful 6 3/4 year old (she tells me the '3/4' is VERY important) daughter from Hunan Province!
I dropped my hair dryer once in the toilet, plugged in, running, and without thinking fished it out before unplugging it. Guess I used up one of my freebies. :) Glad everyone's ok.
I caught my 3 year old in the process of successfully opening up the 6th floor window in the hotel in NYC that we were staying at. It never occured to me that 1) those windows actually opened 2) With all the exciting toys we had brought for the trip that he would want to open the window.
A radio fell into the sink when I was bathing our then 9-month old daughter. I immediately scooped her out but I know I received a big shock....don't know if she did. That taught me a big lesson as far as believing what they say about electrical applicances near water. Oooh, scary bad. Glad everything is ok there but hope you pounded that info into her head as only a scared-to-death mother can!
Hey! Falls off the bed are not death defying enough to count as freebies. I'm positive of this. Absolutely. Wanna know how many times I've heard the.... thunk... waaaaah! Well, I can't tell you because I lost count. First one was our first night in China..... oh, yeah, we're good parents.
Scary.
My now (miraculously) 14 year old once took a pair of scissors and cut the cord to a space heater. Lucky for him it wasn't plugged in or he'd have been a crispy critter. Yikes, the kids ...
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