Don't Complete Your Ballots Quite Yet

While I know many of you didn't have any hesitation about picking me as your choice for "Mother Of The Year 2009", you might want to hold off on casting your votes quite yet. The following story may take me out of the running:

Sweet, precious, chuba-wuba, Morgan Jane is suuuuuuuuch a big girl that she now takes a bath in the big tub. The real deal. She gets so excited when I sit on the edge of the tub with her on my lap as I turn on the water- she starts waving her arms and making that "Ooo-ooo" monkey sound. She loves nothing more than kicking her little froggy feet under the water, and smiles up at me while I lay her back in the water to wash her darling little brown hair. She laughs like an adorable Beavis when she gets a hold if the huge yellow Dickies BBQ cup I use to rinse them off with (and I do everything in my power for her not to drink the bath water from it). Her sweet little fat fingers fish out the fun little toys that are bobbing in the water. She cries when I lift her out when "tubby-time" is done. In a nutshell: She loves sitting in that big bathtub. Loves. It.

Until the other night.

You see, the mesh bag that hangs from two flimsy suction cups and holds all the tub toys had fallen from the sheer weight of naked Barbies and countless plastic Disney characters. I had started running the water and quickly slid the bag and its contents to the side and set Morgan down. She started screaming. I quickly felt the half an inch of water that was slowly filling the tub to make sure it hadn't become scalding in the 2.2 second since I checked it last. Nope, its fine. Then I thought maybe the bottom of the tub was super cold since the water hadn't really filled up yet, but she was still crying while sitting in the warm water, so I knew that wasn't it. I handed her a little Dora the Explorer. Still crying. I handed the Dickies up. Still crying. So then I sort of swishy-schooted her to the side to find another little toy to appease her when she REALLY starts crying. Now I think she's just tired and needs to be bathed and put to bed STAT. So I start to lather up her hair, and lay her down to rinse it really quickly. She stops crying for a minute, but when I scoop her back up to a sitting position she starts screaming again. What in the world?!?! So I quickly, quickly washed her body, rinsed her off and grabbed a towel. As I go to pick her up something falls into the bath. This:

Yup. She had been sitting on this!!! It must have came out of one of the Barbie's or My Little Ponies' beautiful long locks when the bag fell down. And I, her moth-er placed Morgan's precious little chubby tush right on top of it. For a good 10 minutes. Wiggling her around enough to really embed it into her baby flesh. Twice. Oh, the guilt. I felt so awful.

She is fine. No permanent butterfly outlines on the tush. Luckily, she will never remember it happened, but unfortunately, I can't forget. So, please: feel free to change your vote, seeing as how I have officially take myself out of the running.

There's always next year.