How To Fail As A Mother

Some days it would seem that I alone could write the handbook on how to unexpectedly scar your child for life. Earlier this week a bit of slightly funny UN-awesome smacked Liam right upside the head.

It all started a bit like every other Monday, a swing through a fast food place for Mamma's liquid happiness (a la Diet Coke), a stop at a construction site (too frozen and icy for any work to be done today), a drive through the trailer park (this needs a post all of its own) and a trip to the nature center for story time.

Our morning routine complete I asked Liam what he'd like for lunch, 99.99999999% of the time this results in "GO HOME! I'd like a jelly sandwich." Today, however, he asked to go to the "peanuts place"--a local burger chain where you order and then wait and take a seat all the while noshing on the free peanuts they have on hand. Free peanuts that one day not too long ago I noticed he was eating with the SHELL ON.

That my friends is a protein & fiber, one-two punch.

Needless to say we stopped, ordered, bumped into a friend from school (they made googly eyes at each other across the restaurant), and I plopped him down at a table while I went to get napkins and ketchup and the like. Unbeknowst to me at this same time he decided that he needed to use the potty and decided that the best place to stand to let me know this was directly behind me. So when I took a step back from the ketchup pump with two FULL containers of ketchup they fell and spilled all over...

his head...

and face...

and neck...

and shoulder..

and arm...

and chest.

The entire restaurant gasped and then gave me their saddest look-what-just-happened-to-your-kid face.

He screamed (I'll give him that one), I would have screamed too.

The rather unfortunate part of this is that they only have napkins at the front of the store, so we had to parade him past all the "sad" onlookers to get to the napkins, to try to at least contain the mess.

He was leery of condiments before this episode, I'm pretty sure he'll stay away from there from here on out.