Sundays at the Park with Babies

Let me set the scene. We are at the park: me, Matt, and Gabe, with my sister-in-law Mandy, her husband Dan, and their darling daughter Parker. It is a fine, sunny afternoon, with the temperature in the low 70s (yes East Coast and Midwest people, please feel free to be jealous). Gabe has just awoken from a little nap, and is smiling sleepily up at us. Parker, who crawls fast as lightning, has been cheerfully making the rounds of the park, exploring the grass, feeling the sand, picking up random rocks and leaves and exclaiming, "Ooooooh!" The grown-ups are chatting casually, enjoying the lovely weather and the not-too-crowded park and the happy babies.

As we talk Parker starts to wander off, and as Mandy rises to follow her, Dan says, "No worries, I'll keep an eye on her," and walks after her. Mandy smiles and nods gratefully, and we resume our discussion of something trivial, handbags maybe.

Five minutes later, Dan is racing across the grassy field towards us, carrying Parker in his arms. She has a smug smile on her gorgeous little face, lips clamped tightly together. "She has something in her mouth," says Dan, panting slightly and looking panicked.

"Aaah! What is it?" asks Mandy, trying to get her fingers into Parker's mouth. Parker turns her head sharply away, still smiling. "Parker, what is in your mouth?" She twists her little body away from her mommy, unwilling to give up the goods. Finally after about thirty seconds of wrestling, with Dan holding her arms down and Mandy sticking fingers into her mouth, Parker spits out...three peanut shells.

Gross. Gross.

That's right, she had found some old peanut shells on the ground, remnants of someone's earlier snack, and had managed to get them in her mouth before her daddy could stop her. And as her parents forcibly remove the peanut shells from her mouth, all her cheerful cuteness ends. Parker gives her parents a dirty look (if a one-year-old is capable of a dirty look), then opens her rosebud mouth and HOWLS.

Gabe, who had been monitoring the situation with sleepy smiles and yawning, now looks at Parker with wide eyes, and then decides he had better open up his rosebud mouth and howl too. HOWL HOWL HOWL. This only serves to further incite Parker, and soon the two of them are trying to outdo each other in howling and hysteria and freaking out.

I think it was a draw.

This is where I confess to being a bad parent. I should have picked up Gabe to comfort him and walked him away from the situation immediately. I did finally manage to do this, but not for a few moments. I had to wait until after I stopped laughing so hard my eyes teared.