Sunday Morning Funnies

• Check out the most dead-on, amusing description of a four-month-old baby that I've ever read, over at Laid-Off Dad.

• The Zero Boss posted about this thread a few weeks ago, calling it the "Funniest. Thread. Ever." It is.

• Since two threads are better than one, here is a second you may not have read yet. Julie at a little pregnant wrote about her first childcare "boner." She asks her readers to share their own boners, and do they ever. You are guaranteed to laugh at loud, here's a glimpse:

"I came home from work at 6:00 a.m. one morning to find my baby daughter shoved between the gap of the sectional with only a woman's day magazine for a diaper. My hubby was sleeping naked by the kitchen window which went all the way to the floor ..."

I started to post my childcare boners at Julie's but realized I had too many and had to instead humiliate myself publicly by posting them to my blog:

• I'm 11 years old, entrusted to take my 3-year-old niece, 4-year-old neighbor and 6-year-old nephew to the nearby riverside park, located a short walk away. We arrive to the ever-present flock of geese, which my niece and nephew charge with gusto while my neighbor begins screaming as if he'd stepped on a yellow jacket. I picked him up to calm him when my niece began screaming: a goose had her firmly by the cheek, and showed no signs of letting go. I swatted and screamed at the goose as it shook my niece by the face but to no avail. Then a young couple came to our rescue. The guy clubbed the goose with his arm and his girlfriend offered to drive us home. I refused due to my mother's ingenious method of allowing me to watch the nightly news to induce fear of strangers. But she forgot to induce fear of geese.

• I'm 12 years old, entrusted to take the same niece and nephew to the playground of our seasonal campground. First, I give my niece an "underdog," pushing her swing high above my head as I walk beneath her then let go. She totally doesn't hold on and falls backward onto her head in the dirt. Do I take her back to my parents? Noooo. I allow her to follow her 6-year-old brother up the now-illegal, tall metal slide. Both standing at the top, they begin to scuffle, my nephew pushes her off the slide and she free falls 8 feet to the dirt! I think I was in shock as I walked her back to our campsite. She was, somehow, fine. She's now 26, newly engaged and a childcare provider, probably inspired by her own traumatic experience as a youth. And she still talks to me.

• I'm 30, entrusted with the entire life of a baby. Exhausted from pregnancy, I place my 1 year old in a play yard in my family room, crawl behind the couch where he can't see me and collapse into a nap. A while later he fusses so I drag myself over to scoop him up. He greets me with a wide-mouthed grin, revealing a large yellow jacket in his mouth. After I stopped screaming and my heart started beating again, I flicked the bug's head and wings out of his mouth. I could tell it was dead, and hoped I'd gotten it all. A moment later, the abdomen appeared, stinger poised on his delicate tongue. I think I bruised his lip knocking the thing out of his mouth. Evidently I didn't check the floor very well for choking or heart attack hazards.

• I'm 35, and allowed my three year old to fall out of his 3-foot-high bed not once but three times before installing a bedrail.

• I'm 35 and, in the most traumatic and near-fatal boner of them all, I nearly smother my newborn by rolling on top of her while cosleeping.

Well, I haven't re-read this but here you go ... We're off to the park, where I'm sure I'll think of a few more boners to add. I hope child protective services isn't reading this.

UPDATE: OK, I did think of two more:

• I pick up 15-month-old Ben from his babysitter's to find him sweaty and cranky. When we get home I offer him a snack which he refuses. He continues to crank so I bring him outside. This cheers him up a bit but then he cries again, so I pick him up and carry him around, letting him pick leaves off the treas and the like. I begin to think that he must be sick. But then, about 45 minutes after we left his babysitters, I realize I haven't checked his diaper. I remove his diaper and find not only poop but the worst diaper rash I've ever seen, complete with red skin and white welts. No wonder the poor kid was cranky!

• I drop 3-year-old Ben off at preschool. His teachers eye me doubtfully as I tell them I don't think he's sick, it's just the usual separation anxiety. When I pick him up, they tell me he wasn't right all day. He seems fine to me as we eat lunch, then head downstairs to put in the laundry. Suddenly he starts to cry because I put something in the washer that he wanted to put in, and I chalk it up to a temper tantrum. I bring him upstairs, noticing that he's kind of hot but chalking it up to the crying. I put him on the couch and he begins acting all delirious, rolling his eyes into his head and then passing out. Finally, I bring him to the doctor, where I find out he has 103 degree fever and a double ear infection. Go, mom!