maxbarry.com
Thu 31
Jul
2008

House of Cuteness & Horror

Max A lot of parenting is like this: your gorgeous almost-three-year old daughter hops toward you, shouting, “Look, Daddy! Big jumps!” and you think: I hope she doesn’t trip and impale herself on that tree branch.

I don’t think I’m especially paranoid, but when I’m playing with Fin, I get flashes of her horrifically injuring herself about every ten minutes. When she actually does hurt herself, I’m mostly just relieved, because it’s so much better than it was in my head.

It’s a little weird to have your life filled with interlocking moments of joy and abject terror. They don’t mention that in the parenting books.

The other way parenting is like a horror show is how you periodically stumble past dolls arranged as crime scenes. Maybe it’s just me, but when I see something like this, I can’t help but think multi-vehicle pile-up:

Bodies strewn across floorboards following head-on baby smash

And this strikes me not so much as “laundry day for Miffy” as “Hostel 3”:

Miffy awaits punishment

And I’m sorry, I know Baby Puss got wet in the bath and needed to be dried, but there is no way to look at this and not see a baby on a hook:

Baby drying on hook. Not real baby. Doll baby.

But then you see this and forget all about it.

Breakfast goes better with goggles

By the way, sorry for that long break between blogs. What the hell was I doing? I don’t even know.