San Francisco Dad

Not Quite the Police Blotter

SFBaby likes to drop things. Yes, we admit it. Whether it’s her toys, her ball or her food, she’s a fan of dropping stuff. This is particularly evident during mealtime when she uses it as a way to signal that she is done eating. SFBaby will often pick up a piece of food, look straight at us, hold the food all the way over to the side of her high chair, and drop it on the floor. If we’re not paying attention, she repeats this (and maybe tosses a spoon or plastic bowl while she’s at it).

We first tried suggesting that she not toss food around, but given her still-tender age, we decided that we should pick our battles and not worry so much about this one yet. (The parenting books apparently agree with us—not that parenting books know anything, that is.)

So, this means that we tend to be a little laissez faire about food on the floor during meals. Although SFDad absolutely hates crap on the floor in general and he tries to sweep it up quickly, it’s not uncommon that we have half a cup of food lying around (either deliberately or by accident) at the end of mealtime.

Give that, it’s not surprising that SFBaby sometimes gets to the food before we do. When we think of this, our minds immediately flash to Dickensian novels, police blotters and incident reports that we’ve seen published in the newspaper. In our minds, they go something like this:

“The mother, who was arrested for running a crack den, [...insert references to rap sheet, probation officer, mention of three-strikes law, the meth lab in the bathtub, etc. ...], and even worse, the children were running around half-naked and eating off the floor!”

When reading these reports in our pre-parenting years, our minds immediately conjured up images of beggar children living in rodent-infested houses with nasty stained carpets.

Now that we have a child, I admit that we’re starting to wonder: what’s so wrong with a few stale Joe’s O’s, anyway?

Tags: bad dad, boundaries, confessions, eating, joe's o's

2 Comments

• friendly neighbor to the north says:

  July 3 2009 at 2:43 pm

  There is no getting around food on the floor – or babies eating food off floors. hey. At least you clean up the crack needles.
• Lisa says:

  July 3 2009 at 4:00 pm

  You just need a ravenous Pug or two that will clean up the floor straight away. Never a scrap of food left on the floor for the baby to eat!