OMGosh, I bit my kid...

{via}

When Professor and I were dating, our dates looked like this:

Go to the gas station/grocery store.
Wander aisles, chatting and giggling and ogling all the treats.
Spend the few dollars we had rounded up (usually on pop, Ramen, candy, and/or chips).
Go back to one of our houses, eat our treats, and talk-talk-talk...or watch TV.

Exciting stuff, eh?  When we went to his house, we watched from his DVD collection, which included a lot of seasons of ER.

I had never really watched ER while it was actually on TV; the only episode I remember sitting down and watching with my mom was the one where Dr. Greene died.

{Sorry if that was a spoiler for some of you.}

Anyway, ever since I've had children--well, mobile children--I fear taking them to the doctor because of this show.  "Oh no!  You have a bruise on your knee and we're going for your checkup tomorrow...they're going to think I beat you!"

No doctor has ever commented on my daughter's bumps, scrapes, or bruises, because they've always been typical little-kid injuries.  But every time I have a moment of heart palpitations as we're getting ready to go to that check-up that they'll take away my babies and call me a bad mother.

{This isn't just an irrational fear that I have.  A pastor's wife once told me she had the same worries with her boys, but the doctor told her they can tell the difference between injuries from play and injuries from more sinister things, which helped put me at ease.}

And then the other day...I bit my kid.

Scrunch woke up from her nap, happy to cuddle for a minute but eager to get down and play.  Professor brought her some animal crackers, which she dove into as she wandered the living room.  She cruised along the couch and shoved an animal cracker in my mouth, so I obliged and took a little bite.

"Num num num," I said in that animated way parents do.  She beamed and giggled and got so excited she had to sit down.  She grabbed another cracker and came back.

I paid no attention to the texture as she shoved the would-be cracker in my mouth and, reader friend, here is where I must stop and say this: They should not make animal crackers the color of person flesh.  This is why God invented unnatural food coloring.

So, yes, I bit down on my child's finger, and it took us both a second too long to realize it.

But before you call Child Services or think that Scrunch got the short end of the stick, know this: she worked her way up from piddly animal crackers to an Oreo, to help her cope with the pain.  And my child-biting days?   Well, I hope that they're all in the past.

And also that animal cracker companies will work on that food coloring thing.