My Watch

Look, I know. Kids will be kids. They’ll fall out of trees. They’ll break their arms. They’ll get huge gashes that need twenty stitches. But I have a hard and fast rule that governs all my child raising: NOT ON MY WATCH.

I don’t want to be the one who contributed to their life-changing injuries. More over, I don’t want to be in attendance of their life-changing injuries. Does that make me an overprotective parent? Sure. I’ll gladly accept that label while Diana sits in the emergency room.

Last weekend I almost blew my one and only rule.

Here’s how it went down. I had Luca on the changing table and removed his (thankfully) pee filled diaper. I reached over to the trusty Diaper Genie and attempted to plop the sogginess into open lid. But it wouldn’t fall in. There was a pair of sweat pants jammed in there. Elijah sweatpants.

Look, we’ve all been there. You have an accident in your sweatpants and you want to hide the evidence. So you jam them into a garbage can. I’ve done it. You’ve done it. We’ve all done it. Most of us just haven't done it during an NCAA game at Murphy's Pub. I've said too much.

I quickly became engaged in a tug of war with the Diaper Genie. It simply would not release the sweatpants. I yanked and yanked.

And then I saw Luca fall off the changing table out of the corner of my eye.

Luckily, I have cat-like reflexes. So I stuck my leg out and pinned him to the side of the table. This prevented him from falling all the way to the floor. But it also prevented him from not getting completely smooshed into the changing table.

He cried. I hugged. He cried. I kissed. He cried. I shushed.

Ask any parent. Every kid falls off the changing table. It’s a rite of passage. Elijah famously fell off the changing table when he was roughly the same age as Luca. BUT IT WASN”T ON MY WATCH. It was Kitty’s fault.

But this one was all me.

p.s. Bestest picture ever.