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incompetent parenting
Apr. 11th, 2012 09:39 pmThis past weekend we took the Junebug to Florida to meet his great-grandmother, who, alas, is not in the best of health. Basically, although we hope it is not the case, this might have been her only chance to meet him. She did get to hold him and play with him a bit, so I'm glad we went.
But given that we were in Florida - land of warm ocean! We thought we must also take a couple of hours out of our day and take the Junebug to the beach. Total, massive failure. This was our fault. We did not make sure he was nice and full before we introduced him to a scary new environment, and like most of us, the Junebug has way more emotional resilience when he's not hungry. Also, I pushed him too fast: he was okay with sitting in the sand, and seemed to kind of enjoy it, but then I took him into the water, and the WAVES ATTACKED HIM and then he was frightened and miserable. And then it occurred to me that he might be hungry! So I fed him right there, which made him feel better, except that I had not moved far enough up the beach before I sat down and I didn't want to move once he was latched on because it would involve pulling him off so Mr. E laughed his ass off about how Californian I was, sitting in the surf in my underwear nursing a naked baby, but every once in a while a particularly big wave would make it up far enough to splash us, and the baby would pull off long enough to sob heartbreakingly in terror and then SCHLOOMP back onto my boob, and basically the giant neon arrow floating over my head blinking WORST MOTHER EVER manifested again. I hate that damn thing.
And then after that of course we had a baby entirely covered in sand. We washed him, but the sand would not come off his scalp, because it was stuck to his cradle cap. Yes the Junebug has had oily yellow scales on his scalp. I realize this is gross, but in the grand scheme of baby grossness, it hardly even registers, so we had not done anything about it because it hasn't bothered him and our pediatrician says it just goes away eventually. So I was willing to live with it. But I was not willing to live with it once it was gluing sand to his head. So I sacrificed an old t-shirt and a new clean toothbrush and poured mineral oil all over his tiny head and scrubbed it with the toothbrush. Which got rid of the sand and the cradle cap! And then I shampooed him. Four times. And then Mr. E washed him the next morning. And the Junebug still went off to daycare looking like the Exxon Valdez ran aground on his head. Greaser just doesn't really do his look justice. It's possible I used too much mineral oil.
Also, I don't know about you, but nursing still makes me feel like Wolverine.
But given that we were in Florida - land of warm ocean! We thought we must also take a couple of hours out of our day and take the Junebug to the beach. Total, massive failure. This was our fault. We did not make sure he was nice and full before we introduced him to a scary new environment, and like most of us, the Junebug has way more emotional resilience when he's not hungry. Also, I pushed him too fast: he was okay with sitting in the sand, and seemed to kind of enjoy it, but then I took him into the water, and the WAVES ATTACKED HIM and then he was frightened and miserable. And then it occurred to me that he might be hungry! So I fed him right there, which made him feel better, except that I had not moved far enough up the beach before I sat down and I didn't want to move once he was latched on because it would involve pulling him off so Mr. E laughed his ass off about how Californian I was, sitting in the surf in my underwear nursing a naked baby, but every once in a while a particularly big wave would make it up far enough to splash us, and the baby would pull off long enough to sob heartbreakingly in terror and then SCHLOOMP back onto my boob, and basically the giant neon arrow floating over my head blinking WORST MOTHER EVER manifested again. I hate that damn thing.
And then after that of course we had a baby entirely covered in sand. We washed him, but the sand would not come off his scalp, because it was stuck to his cradle cap. Yes the Junebug has had oily yellow scales on his scalp. I realize this is gross, but in the grand scheme of baby grossness, it hardly even registers, so we had not done anything about it because it hasn't bothered him and our pediatrician says it just goes away eventually. So I was willing to live with it. But I was not willing to live with it once it was gluing sand to his head. So I sacrificed an old t-shirt and a new clean toothbrush and poured mineral oil all over his tiny head and scrubbed it with the toothbrush. Which got rid of the sand and the cradle cap! And then I shampooed him. Four times. And then Mr. E washed him the next morning. And the Junebug still went off to daycare looking like the Exxon Valdez ran aground on his head. Greaser just doesn't really do his look justice. It's possible I used too much mineral oil.
Also, I don't know about you, but nursing still makes me feel like Wolverine.
