Like drunks, it seems there are different types of bloggers. The reviewers (my favorite, and most opinionated: Orson Scott Card). The authors (if you have not read Shannon Hale’s blog, you really should). The journal bloggers, with varying levels of detail (today I ate Marshmallow Mateys for breakfast! hooray!). And, like me, the confessional bloggers. I tend to blog my deep, dark secrets, things I wouldn’t admit to in person. Note here the title of this post.
So, let’s be honest, shall we? I have used my children as napkins. On multiple occasions. In fact, I did it today. Here’s the thing: my baby is nursing in my lap, so I’m stuck in place for at least the next 10 minutes. Suddenly I turn into a total slob (which, admittedly, doesn’t take much); I drip ketchup down my chin or my fingers. But I repeat, I have a baby in my lap. I can’t go get a paper napkin. But what do I have at hand? A piece of fabric sitting exactly where a cloth napkin would in a fancy restaurant (to the uninitiated, this fabric looks suspiciously like a onesie being worn by a little baby). Problem solved.
I have also used my baby as my tissue at least once, but only for tears. Out in the hallway at church, carrying her the other day, I was feeling a little emotional, and she was wearing a soft cotton dress. Seemed like a good idea at the time.
Other mothering practices I embarrassingly confess to?
I sat across the room the other day and just watched while my baby chewed on a piece of paper. What’s the big deal? It’s just a little extra fiber.
I hide our movies that I can’t stand watching again. Alice in Wonderland spent a couple months in my dresser drawer.
These are the mothering practices I’m embarrassed about but not mortified by. I deleted some others that I considered sharing, because they were too awful. And we shall not even mention the practices that are, well, unmentionable.
However, despite all the stuff I have done, I could still hold my head up high until about a month ago. That was the day I engaged in the evil that I once swore I would never, ever take part: the blankie-wipe. You know what it is: when a mother uses her child’s wrappings to wipe her child’s nose. I used to ask myself, Why oh why, when there are tissues in the world, does this occur? Why, when there are leaves, newspapers, and innumerable other reasonably soft, relatively harmless products surrounding us?
And then, my day of humility came. Outdoors with my baby, far from civilization (at least 30 feet), I saw that her nose was running. I had nothing on hand except the blankie she was wrapped up in. I was desperate. The snot was starting to drip onto her lips and would soon start triggering her licking action. I had to do something! I cringed, I turned away so I didn’t have to watch myself, and … I wiped. How the mighty are fallen.
*Ummm ... just to clarify, it was not this particular scene that inspired the crush.
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