Lessons in Bad Parenting Volume One

How to be a Bad Parent Lesson One: Forgetting Your Child at Daycare.  

Yup, that's right, Eric and I forgot to pick Madeline up from school today.  We totally suck.

To be fair, we didn't really forget her.  We had a misunderstanding.  I thought Eric was picking her up, and he thought I was picking her up.

When I walked in the door this afternoon,  Madeline was not in the jumper-roo, she was not on her play mat, she was not sitting with Eric...where he lay napping on the couch....  Wait a second.  My brain stalled.  Something was not quite right.  

"Uh, did you get the baby?" I asked from the doorway.

Eric leaped up with a start and looked at me with slight panic in his eyes.  "Uh, no. Did you?" 

There was a moment of silence between us. Eric stared at me the way one stares at a very hungry lion, clearly worried that I was about to bite his head off.  

"OMIGOD!  We forgot Maddie at daycare?!?  We're the worst parents in the world!!!"  I screeched.

We grabbed the keys and were back out the door in less than two seconds.   "I can't believe we forgot her.  Poor baby!" I kept repeating.  Scenes from Little Orphan Annie, Oliver, and Tarzan played in my mind.  Would no one adopt her because of her red hair?  Would she have to turn to a life of crime?  Would she be raised by a pack of Chimps?

Eric corrected me.  Again, we hadn't forgotten her at daycare.  We both knew where she was after all.  

When we showed up shortly after five, Madeline was the second to last baby in the building, and she was sleeping like an angel in her crib.  The teacher explained that they had tried to keep her awake for us since we were usually there by 3, but she just couldn't keep her eyes open.  Worrying that her parents had abandoned her and that she'd have to earn her keep by scrubbing the floors must have tuckered the poor baby clean out.  (It's a hard knock life, for us!)      

"Sorry," Eric quickly lied, "We got caught up in house stuff.  Buying a house sure does take up a lot of time..."

I guess neither one of us wanted to explain that in reality we are the worst parents in the world.

"Oh by the way," the teacher started, "Do you mind filling out this incident report?  One of Madeline's little friends decided to bite her on the ear today."

Wow.  We had forgotten our baby, and she had her ear bitten??  Her life clearly was turning into a Dickens novel.  Not a good day for the Maddie Bear.  To add insult to injury, it was the ear already scarred from the cat.

Eric and I kept Madeline up an hour later tonight so that we could shower her with love and affection to ease our guilt.

Luckily, she's too young to remember this.

We're the worst.

"Please, sir, can I have some more?"