Swear to god, he’s not feral.
Anyone with small children will appreciate the difficulty of leaving one’s home and making it to their intended destination unscathed. It becomes more and more difficult with the increasing number of babies.
I just needed to go to the grocery store. I just needed Panko bread crumbs. Because if you’ve had baked chicken with Panko, versus ANY OTHER TYPE OF BREAD CRUMB, you will understand it cannot be substituted. I may have a pile of laundry scattered throughout the house ( thanks son, my bras absolutely DO belong in the oven)….but my family will have properly breaded Panko chicken for dinner, so help me…
Lots of parents bathe their kids at night, and I understand the importance of that ritual, though it never quite stuck for us. My house is a very charming, 1950′s home just at the base of some rolling foothills and a nature preserve. That’s my loving way of saying the house is really fucking old and needs a shit-ton of work to get it to the standards most people are accustomed to enjoying in the first world. That said, we do enjoy hot water, and electricity, usually. When the pipes in the basement aren’t broken…and so long as we don’t run multiple space-heaters at once, which is a lot to ask because we have no central heating. Spring/Summer living is just dandy. But its freezing in the winter, especially when snow is dusting the hills just above us…And we are spoiled and from the Bay Area, CA., not the tundra. I do not hunt seals, nor am I used to boiling whale blubber for fuel. So anything south of 50 degrees outside is pretty damn cold, even if the house is relatively insulated ( thank you nice windows) it’s still a bit uncomfortable to shower and go to bed with wet hair. My Mexican mother has warned me all my life of the IMMINENT DEATH that awaits when you go to bed with wet hair. Add to that a healthy helping of exhaustion and you have yourself a recipe for NO BEDTIME BATHS. This is all relevant to the story regarding my much-needed trip to the store for Panko bread crumbs…which there are no substitutions for….really, very critical for baked, breaded chicken.
We begin our day with breakfast and a bath. It wakes us up and we feel clean and smell good to start our day. I have a two-year old and a nine-month-old. There is no such thing as a shower to myself. So we all stuff ourselves into the shower and its tricky and slippery and exhausting and takes a good chunk of time. But once we are all dressed and cute, we are feeling GREAT and the challenges ahead seem minimal. Especially something as simple as getting Panko bread crumbs…for which there is no substitution.
On the way out to the car, my son decides, “why walk when I can totally drag myself across the grass. Oh look, it’s a little muddy. Even better.”
Of course I am powerless to stop it, as I have my hands full with a shockingly heavy baby and the diaper-bag plus keys and my purse. He went from perfectly polished to a little muddy. But onward we march, as there is no turning back. If we go back into the house, we will surely never make it out again. And I really need the Panko bread crumbs….for which no other crumbs compare.
Then he finds some stale Cheerios that he stored somewhere in his car seat, like a little chipmunk. He managed to make those three Cheerios into a paste that he proceeded to spread all over his entire shirt and face. You never knew three, stale Cheerios could cover so much ground. So we have muddy pants and hands, plus cheerio-paste everywhere in a matter of three minutes. But I say to myself, “ah, so it’s a little mud and Cheerios, no huge deal, he’s still somewhat presentable with a quick baby-wipe clean-up.” We get to the store and I realize the baby was playing with the baby wipes on the last car trip and pulled them all out and now they are dry and wont be cleaning anything. Whatever, bigger picture, we are at the store, and we need those bread crumbs( for which no crumbs compare).
Oh I wont bore you with the details of how long this went on…mud, cheerio-paste, blackberries, some kind of sticky, questionable substance (I don’t even know), an unexpected dump and a healthy helping of boogers.
The people in line were starring at me like I should really take more pride in my child’s appearance. Like he is some kind of feral child. And all I’m feeding him is a half empty container of blackberries and
….two boxes of Panko bread crumbs. For which none compare.
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