Saturday, March 9, 2013

The Kiss of Guilt

Last week I was about to step into a meeting at work when my cell phone rang. The caller ID caused my stomach to clench... It was the school.

Calls from school are not usually a good thing. It usually means either you're child is sick or hurt or your child did something terrible. This call was the former.

"[Little Dude] fell on the basketball court and bit into his lip. His top lip looks pretty bad and it looks like his bottom lip is hurt too. There's a lot of swelling and blood so it's hard to tell how bad it is. Do you want to come check him out?"

Now, if you ever think moms sometimes seem distracted, it's because we are busy doing a hundred calculations in our brains. As soon as the school receptionist asked if I wanted to come down there, my head was filled with all the variables...

He busts his lips all the time and it may not be too bad, but on the other hand he could have bitten all the way through his lip and that is bad, but if I go down there he'll have to come home with me because he won't want me to leave him especially after the trauma of biting his lips, but if it's not really that bad then he doesn't need to have me upset him emotionally by showing up and leaving, but  then again he may need me to rush him to urgent care, but he used to fall and hit bust his lips all the time at preschool and he always recovered and if I rush to school the first time he gets hurt and it's not truly serious then I might besetting a precedence that I'll always come to swoop in and rescue him, but he needs to learn to be a big boy and cope when he's not seriously hurt, but I really want to skip this meeting and go grab my baby boy and hug him and make sure he's ok, and maybe this is one of those times when he really needs mommy to come get him and hang out with him the rest of the day.

The debate in my head took all of 3 seconds before I said, "Put a bag of ice on his lips for about 20 minutes and then call me to tell me how they look."

Then I took my cell phone into the meeting, explained I may have to leave early and sat there thinking about my kid's bloody lips the whole time: It's before lunch and even if he stays at school he may need me to bring him something soft to eat. Maybe I can at least bring him a yogurt or a milkshake. Yeah, a milkshake would be good. The cold might be good for his mouth right now. Why hasn't the school called yet? Why didn't I just go down there? Maybe I should have gone down there. Now I'm not just the crazy mom who constantly calls the office to find out every detail for everything that's going on and bugs them about whether he's learning at the right level, but I'm also one of those moms who doesn't care when her kid is sick or hurt. What must they think of me? I'm definitely not winning any Mother of the Year awards for this. Why haven't they called me yet? Which urgent care is closest to the school?

After about 40 minutes of this, I excused myself from the meeting and called the school to find out his status.

"One of the teachers used to be a nurse and she took care of him and got him calmed down. The swelling stopped and he went back to class."

Ah, relief and the justifying knowledge that I DID make the right decision.

Of course, I spent the rest of the day imagining my kid sitting in class with tears and ice packs and blood down the front of his shirt. When my husband picked him up, he brought another flood of relief by telling me it wasn't bad at all. Just some scrapes. He was even well enough to kiss us goodnight later.

Ah, motherhood.

Talk about an imagination running wild!

Thursday, March 7, 2013

Just a little bragging...

OK, so no funny story today... this is just a mom bragging on her kid. Her 5-year-old child. After a hard Wednesday night of memorizing a ton of verses (John 3:14-16 and some stuff somewhere in the book of Joshua), my child sat in the back seat while I drove him home. It was pretty quiet, until...



Obviously, that's not the back seat of my car. In the car he said everything perfectly and added the Pledge of Allegiance on for good measure. So I rewarded him like any good mother would... by making him do the whole thing again so I could videotape it!

They are learning some serious stuff in Kindergarten!