Waiting for the floors to dry...

Today is a funny day, not funny ha ha, but funny like WTF is going on. Mayson started things off by waking up before 7 am this morning (HIGHLY unusual) wailing her head off (even more unusual). I tried to go in and convince her to go back to bed but she was having none of it (also HIGHLY unusual, the kid likes to sleep in god bless her). So we got up "early" (as all other moms reading are tsk'ing and shaking their heads I know) and went down for breakfast. Usually when offered the usual breakfast fair, she happily obliges - cereal, bananas, toast, oatmeal, etc. Today she starts demanding noodles. Not blood likely am I making noodles at 7 am, so I carry on and make her some toast and give her some cereal, or should I say I made the dogs some toast and gave the dogs some cereal because that's who she promptly gave it to. Not funny. Okay, so I now I have a couple of hours to kill before heading out to a swimming date with a friend. So, because Mayson in such lovely mood from refusing to eat the ONE and only meal she will reliably eat, it's time for my old pal Pablo to do some child minding while I get some laundry in and round things up for our outing, not to mention catch a quick coffee. Off to the pool, fine and dandy. Swim, swim, swim, all good. Change room, Mayson refuses to shower (I force her and she is not happy), then she decides to empty the baby shampoo bottle on the change room bench while I'm getting dressed. When I start wiping it up, she goes "wash hair" and rubs it in her already clean hair. Now I'm dressed and there is no way I'm getting her back in the shower after that ordeal. We end the change room fun with Mayson dropping a metal encased 1.2 L bottle of water on my toe, I think it is fractured.
After a quick visit with another friend, we make a quick stop at Costco. Mayson whines about sitting in the seat in the cart and wants to sit in the basket, so I cave. As I mosey from the door to the clothing section I keep telling her she HAS TO SIT DOWN, over and over I say this. She repeatedly stands up. Okay, you can stand, but you must hang on to the seat of the cart facing mommy (so I can keep a hand on her and make sure she doesn't fall). I am acutely aware of the great potential of her falling and yet against my better judgement I try to accomodate her and reduce the risk. We get to the clothes. I stop the cart to look at something. The cart is stopped, Mayson moves toward the end of the cart, her movement causes the cart to move a little AND...yes the unthinkable happens, as I shout Mayson, she teeters head first over the end of the cart and WHACK, lands on her back on the concrete. She must of had the wind knocked out of her pretty good because I had her picked up and was talking in her ear before the first wail came out. I wanted to cry too but couldn't because all the eyes on us forced me to keep it together (so I'll cry now instead). I am that idiotic parent every retail employee talks about, how they see kids fall out of the cart all the time and yet these people who are too stupid to do the right thing let their children stand in the cart. I am that parent. I am the parent who could have been on her way to the emergency department this afternoon after her child had a seizure from cracking her head on the concrete floor in Costco. Or whose child teeth were lying in a pool of blood on the floor of Costco. I am that parent who shouldn't be allowed to have kids because they are just too stupid and irresponsible.
But I know I am usually smarter than that. I like to think that I am responsible. I feel like a lesson was taught to me today that will stick with me and always be a hard one to live by - that doing what makes your child happy and doing what is in your childs best interest are very often not the same thing. And what a disaster can result when you choose the wrong course. I got lucky, I got really, really lucky today. I keep thanking god that my perfect baby is still perfect tonight as she sleeps in her crib, I will probably even go look in on her just to reassure myself of that. I will never get the picture out of my mind of her little body summersaulting over the end of that cart and how badly I as shaking as I held her there in the clothing aisle for 10 minutes, trying to calm her down. How that shaking finally stopped on the drive home. I know other parents are not so lucky, sometimes even the tiniest lapses in judgement can change a lifetime. That's the crap deal about parenting. It's not like a job where you can have a slack day or you've got someone double checking your work. With parenting, sometimes a moment of inattentiveness, or a bad decision, can go either way. That's the risk we take when we bring these little miracles into this world. It's one hell of a responsibility for anyone to bare. We are rewarded for it a thousand fold everyday with smiles and hugs and "I wuv you"'s. All we can do is our best. Today my best turned out to be not that good. Tomorrow I hope my best will be better.