One of the things that drives me crazy as a parent is the constant feeling that other people are judging your ability to care for a child. I always feel like people are critiquing my every move. Thinking to themselves "That baby should have more layers on." or "That baby is screaming at the top of her lungs in the middle of Walmart because she thinks she is funny. He is a terrible father." In fact, I think that is the one that gets me the most. When she makes noise. I hate being that guy with the loud kid.
Since day one I have felt like this everywhere we go. Whether it is the park or the store, I find myself getting mad at people for being judgmental before ever actually knowing if they are even aware of my presence. Just yesterday an old woman at Target waved me across the parking lot when I wasn't ready to cross. We kind of did that both wave at each other thing for a few seconds and eventually I started to feel too much pressure so I just grabbed everything and ran across to the car. When we got to the other side I noticed that the baby had lost a shoe and I had to go back and get it. I waved to the old lady to just go and, after doing the wave back and forth thing again, she made me go back and get the shoe while she waited. All I could think of after was that old hag going to her daughter's house this Sunday and telling her about the moron with the baby in the Target parking lot. Is this irrational? Probably. Insecure? Definitely. Welcome to the inside of my head. It is like sitting in an uncomfortable dentist office waiting room with all of your ex girlfriends and high school teachers and the only magazines they have are 'Golf' and 'Good Housekeeping.' All the time.
As irrational as that is, it is now a billion times worse given Av's sudden propensity for getting hurt in very, very visible ways. Along with the infamous book shelf gash she has managed to add a mysterious small cut under her left eye, probably from scratching herself in the face in the morning, a cheek bruise, probably from flailing around in her crib, a nasty raspberry on her forehead, from falling down in the middle of the sidewalk as Monica repeatedly yelled 'SLOW DOWN!' and just yesterday she added a second raspberry next to the cut under her left eye at the playground. You will notice that I am not sure where a few of these came from. That is because she flails around in her crib every morning like she is in a wrestling match with her toys. I can only imagine that she has smashed her face off of those bars more than once. That last injury I mentioned was particularly troubling because, not only did she fall off of a slide at the park, there were about three moms around to see it. Cool. Not to mention, she didn't hurt herself while blatantly disobeying orders like she usually does, which in my head frees me from blame, she did it being an idiot when I wasn't close enough to stop her.
She was sliding down the twisty slide by herself, as she had six previous times that day, when she decided that she was going to try and turn herself around when she neared the bottom. This, of course, resulted in her flipping off of the end of the slide and landing on her face. Good job. It is bad enough that she is already the only kid her age who can't operate a slide the right way, but just when I think she is starting to get it she goes and does this.
I ran over to pick her up and checked out her face. Like usual, she cried for a second or two and went back to playing. I looked around at the other judgmental moms trying to read their faces. They were all looking at me and one of them smiled and said "Uh oh, did you get a boo boo?" to the baby. Bitch. I actually don't know why she was a bitch. She seemed really nice. It's because she was judging me, dammit!
The real issue here is not with the parents or the wound, it is with that stupid recycled rubber playground surface that they put in. It is like playing on your high school track. OK, great, it is soft and good for the environment. If you fall on it it tears your skin apart like box of bent and broken thumbtacks. It might as well be asphalt. I mean, come on. Kids fall constantly. They run around not paying attention to anything and yelling, you know they are going to hit the deck at some point. My kid falls like 35 times a day. She can't be the only one, can she? What is wrong with good ol' fashioned wood chips? Oh, because you had to cut down a tree to make them? Get over it, environmentalists, it's not like you didn't just go plat 10 more trees somewhere else with your volunteer work and your screen print t-shirts.
That's all for today. I'm losing my mind.
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