 All right, I don't hate you. I'm just so jealous. I love all that
dangly, sparkly stuff, but I had to stop wearing it at some point
between cooking my first meal and having children.If my memory
serves me correctly, and that is always questionable, I knew I would
have issues with my jewelry while cooking my first meal. I leaned
over to taste my spaghetti sauce, and my necklace dropped into a pot
of boiling noodles, changed colors and melted. I couldn't get it off
without burning my bellybutton.
After that, although I resisted common sense and continued to
wear dangly stuff, there were many instances when I knew I shouldn't
have.
A particular hazard was reaching into the washing machine to pull
out some clothes. My necklace would catch on the inside of the drum,
and I nearly choked to death trying to free myself. Thank goodness
some woman engineer foresaw this possibility and thought to make the
drum stop spinning when the lid was up. Otherwise my husband
would've come home to a grisly scene. Just think, my gravestone
would have read: "Here lies Laura. She should have kept her head out
of the washing machine."
Babies, of course, were another hazard. Especially with the
dangly, sparkly earrings I loved to wear. I never thought of it
then, but now, being a veteran mom, I know that no baby can resist
reaching for something dangling and sparkling when it's so close to
their face. They not only reach for the object, but then, when their
tiny hand finally makes contact with it, they have a reflex action
that makes them grab hold as tight as their little fist can manage
and yank said object into their little mouth. Babies are generally
not cognizant of the fact that said object is attached to someone's
ear.
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 As you contort your neck into a position it has never been in
before, your hand reaches up to loosen the baby's grip. This, you
find, is impossible. A baby is wired to succeed at any cost. She
will not let go until the object reaches her grubby little mouth and
her baby brain has determined that your earring is not food.
The only thing you can do to relieve your own pain is to hoist
the baby and her mouth closer to your ear. Not to fear, this
situation happens only once in a lifetime. Never again will you wear
dangly earrings in the presence of a baby.
My necklaces got shorter after the spaghetti dinner incident, but
my choice of jewelry was trendier in a "new mommy" sort of way. I
used to wear baby rattle necklaces to distract my baby while I was
carrying her. If you simply hand a rattle to a baby, she will drop
it on the floor 400 times in the span of a half-hour. As a result
you have to bend over 400 times with baby in arms to retrieve it.
However the bending-over part isn't that bad; it's the
standing-back-up part that's the killer.
So, it was not unusual to see me walking through a grocery store
wearing a baby, a diaper bag and a very not-fashionable baby rattle
necklace with a chic set of multicolored plastic keys on it.
I am one of those moms I swore I'd never be when I was a
teenager. But I didn't know how dangerous that lovely, dangly,
sparkly jewelry could be. I just didn't know.
[Text from file received from Laura
Snyder]
You can reach the writer at
lsnyder@lauraonlife.com. Or visit
www.lauraonlife.com for
more columns and info about her new book.
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