Episode 47: The soy sauce incident

I have had writer's block something fierce lately, which doesn't make a whole lot of sense because this kid has really been running me around and keeping me entertained since she has figured out how to walk. She still can't stroll around too independently, but she will do it just enough for me to have to stay two steps behind her at all times, and we spend a large part of our day strolling around the house with her holding my hand, grabbing on to stuff and stumbling like she'd been drinking since 6 a.m. Maybe it isn't writer's block. Maybe I am just dead tired.

Even with all of her new found tricks, the days have become more mundane as we have settled back in to a routine post-holidays. Most days consist of the wake-up, eat breakfast, nap, go to the store, eat lunch and then play for five straight hours routine. Damn winter is killing us. What we both wouldn't give to be able to walk to the park and get out of each other's personal space for a half hour.

Well, if it is excitement I am looking for I definitely found it yesterday as I had my very first injury scare as a stay at home dad. (Four months in isn't bad, if you ask me.) I think every parent can think back to a few times they had to deal with disaster. I remember my parents talking about the time I fell down the stairs and landed on my head as a baby, or the time I got the pea lodged in my nose only to sneeze it out on the way to the emergency room, and of course, the time I shattered my nose sledding and required reconstructive facial surgery. Yeah, that was a cool one. Luckily for me, aside from a few clumsy falls and head bumps, we have been able to avoid any real incidents so far with Av. So far.

In retrospect, yesterday's accident was not nearly as bad as I thought at first, but I'll tell the story anyway because there was a solid 10 minutes where I really felt like the most incompetent parent ever.

The problems started when I was cleaning the kitchen after we had eaten lunch. Nothing major, just some tidying up. Of course, throughout the process the baby was walking around at my feet trying to help. She likes to carry the broom around the kitchen now and pretend she is doing the sweeping. It is pretty adorable, I must say, although she will only do it with the real broom, not her toy broom, Tempo, which is a bit aggravating when you are actually trying to clean. Especially when she walks through the pile of dirt and proceeds to sweep it back in to a mess on the floor.

In any event, we had finished up sweeping and were going to go play and I realized that it was bottle time. She was getting a bit cranky so I was hoping for a bottle/ nap afternoon combo and opened the fridge to get her formula out.

As most of you know, this kid loves the fridge, so as soon as I opened the door she did her little drunk Frankenstein run and excitedly started grabbing at things. This is par for the course when you open up the fridge door, so my job became to make sure that she didn't grab anything heavy, dangerous or spicy and try to put it in her mouth. Since I am a full six feet taller than her, it is tough to keep a handle on her when we are both standing up and she is holding on to my legs, so I had all I could handle taking things out of her hands while I searched for the formula.

As the grabbing and pulling continued, she managed to knock over a few bottles of water, prompting me to bend over and pick them up. That, my friends, was an ill advised move. As soon as I bent over I heard several things fall in the fridge like dominoes, followed by a second crash and some crying. I looked up to find a jar of soy sauce with no top emptying all over the fridge, a can of Coke dented and rolling across the floor and the formula that I was attempting to find spilled at her feet. To make matters worse she now has a huge cut under her right eye and smells like leftover Crab Rangoon.

Here is what my investigative team has pieced together. While I was bending over to get the water, the baby pulled on something- believed to be yogurt- that was located in the middle of the second shelf behind several things, including the soy sauce. The pulling triggered the domino effect, knocking the can of Coke off of the shelf and in to the baby' face. When the Coke fell it hit the soy sauce, breaking off the top and spilling it everywhere, along with the formula.

Of course, I panicked when I saw the cut, as her eyes were squinted and she was crying.
"Great, now she has soy sauce in her eyes and a cut under her eye that is bleeding," I thought. "This is not going to be a fun trip to the ER, and it will be an even less fun call to make to Mom once we get there."

Luckily for me, Av took the hit pretty well. After I embraced her and cuddled her for a minute the crying stopped and I realized that the soy sauce was not, in fact in her eyes. The cut was smaller than it looked at first, although she does have a shiner now, but nothing to be too concerned about. I think the worst part of the situation was probably that I had to take out and wash two shelves and a drawer from the fridge and that I got soy sauce all over the only white sweater that I own.

After a bath and a bottle the baby was just fine. The kitchen still smells like soy sauce, though. I am sure this will be far from the last time that I have a 'shit, we are going to have to go to the ER' scare but it is the first one and we made it through with out having to explain what happened to a judgmental nurse. I think that is worth documenting.