Honest To Betsy

This is my yummy yummy baby son somewhere between 3 and 6 months old. I was looking through some old photos and this one leapt out at me. Well, THE KNIVES leapt out at me. My heart stopped beating for a moment there and I screamed, "Somebody get all those knives away from my BABY! O-M-G!"

Does this photo not resemble something one might have to look at and explain to an instructor what 10 safety violations are going on before he or she recieves their babysitting certificate?

The Bumbo is too close to the ledge, the baby isn't wearing any pants even though he's in the food preperation area and, oh yeah, THE KNIVES AND OTHER POINTY KITCHEN IMPLEMENTS!

I don't think my husband took that course.

What's going on here, if I have to spell it out, is Mommy is elsewhere, probably having some one on one time with baby's big sister, and Daddy is at home with his new son. He's large and in charge. Boys night in.

Daddy is cooking (he loves to cook, halleluia!) -- something that involves chocolate and garlic (wtf?) -- and he was all like, cute cute cute! and he grabbed the camera and voila: this here snap.

I'm tempted to ask -- do you let your husband (or what have you) take care of your babies? I know, I know, it's so sexist it's painful. It kind of makes me want to smack myself on at least one side of my head. But do you?

I do (see above). And I know a lot of women are kind of amazed and jealous that my husband is so involved with the kids. He changes diapers and rough-houses. He lets them do make-overs on him and he takes them fishing.

I love it.

But it does sometimes require between a little and a lot of tounge biting. It requires that I backoff, shut-up, and let him develop his own parenting style, make his own mistakes, and gain confidence as a parent. It requires me that I tune out any of the worst attachment parenting advice that insists if a baby leaves his mommy's side for an hour or two before his first birthday and drinks from a (gasp!) bottle he will become a drug addict and it will be all your fault.

I once took my toddler daughter to the bathroom and discovered that Daddy got her dressed with her panties on sideways so that one of her legs was through the waist, the other was through a leg whole, and her torso was through the other obviously very tiny little leg hole. Disaster? No. Difficult to resist the urge to ridicule him for it in front of our children while howling with laughter and never ever letting it drop? Hell yeah.

It also involves some ego whittling. A mommy's got to quell both worries -- that baby won't be allright and that when she returns through the front door everything will be allright. Perhaps better than allright -- perhaps they'll be having the time of their lives and dinner will be ready.

Baby has lived, I'm pleased to say, to tell the tale. He's two-and-a-half.

And, by the way, it was mole. And it was good.