Wednesday, January 27, 2010

Things I Never Knew I'd do as a Parent #1


My six-year-old got out of bed one night and came out to complain that his snake had a hole in it.  He was referring to a stuffed snake that Grandpa had bought for him at a sand castle and chainsaw carving festival not too long ago.  (I know, you're thinking, "chainsaw carving and sandcastles!?"  Believe me, you don't want to know.)  Anyhoo, this seemed to bother him for whatever reason and I assumed he was just trying to avoid going to sleep.  I sent him back to bed with a promise to fix the snake tomorrow.

The next day I remembered the incident and went looking for the snake in his bed.  I was not prepared for what I saw.  The entire bed was covered . . . in bird seed!  If there was ever a WTF!? moment, this was it.  Apparently, cheap carnival snakes are stuffed with bird seed.  Who knew?  I certainly never bothered to think about it.  Then, of course, I felt totally awful because I realized that I had made my son sleep an entire night rolling around in bird seed!  Granted, that's no reason to call CPS, but I still felt really awful. 


So, out comes the vacuum cleaner and after a few swipes it becomes painfully obvious that 1:  I am really short and 2:  the vacuum cleaner hose was designed by someone who never envisioned it being used to clean bird seed out of a loft bed.  Next time I will pay the extra money to get a vacuum with a really long hose attachment.

It took me nearly an hour to totally clean up the mess.  I had to vacuum the sheet, then remove it in order to vacuum the mattress.  Once that was done I had to remove the mattress and clean in-between all the slats of the bed.  When I finally got that done I had to move all the toys under the bed and clean up all the birdseed there.  This was not what I had planned for the afternoon.

When the time comes for us to finally move I imagine that we will find little reminders of this incident every where.  I also know that it will be highly unlikely that my husband will have a clue as to why there would be bird seed in our son's room.

Last weekend I finally got around to fixing said snake with a hole in his side.  As I sat there very patiently stitching up the snake (i.e. not very patiently at all since birdseed flowed continuously from the snake onto the floor) two thoughts came to mind.  One:  exactly how many little Tweety birds would a real snake have to eat in order to be stuffed to such an extreme with bird seed, and two: why in the world am I actually doing this?  Because you know that if this snake actually ends up back in my son's bed it won't take very long for the whole incident to repeat itself.  So, I consoled myself with this thought.  If the incident repeats itself I will at least have a topic for another blog post, and this title came to mind, Stupid Things I've Done More than Once.  Or how about, How Stupid am I?  Lessons I didn't Learn the First Time.  Yup, I bet there are TONS of things I could write on that subject.  

1 comment:

  1. You had me laughing my ass off at the vision of your son sleeping in a bed full of bird seed, that his m e a n mommy made him sleep in all night long. How traumatizing is that. I can see some possible counseling appointments in the future afte this. Just kidding. I'm sure he will only be partially scared for life.

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