You'll Poke Your Eye Out

So, if you had to think of the most dangerous household object that a toddler could possibly get his/her hands on, what would you pick? The fireplace poker? Yeah, me too. Which is why it's so baffling to me that my daughter's father let her play with ours just last night.

We are going out of town ("up north") for the weekend which means that, as usual, I had a few hundred things to do in order to prepare for that. For whatever reason, my other half doesn't dedicate any mental resources at all to making sure that our our child has food to eat, clothes to wear, etc. Last night I told him that allllllll he had to do was to keep her occupied. That was it. He didn't have to bathe her or take her for a walk or do anything strenuous. He put up the baby gate so as to keep her corraled in the living room.

I busied myself with packing, doing laundry, etc. I didn't hear much noise coming out of the living room so eventually I decided that I'd better check and see what was going on. I found P laying on the couch, sleeping. Eyes shut, mouth open. Meanwhile, our daughter was running around behind the recliner, stabbing at the carpet with the DIRTY FIREPLACE POKER. I called P by his full name and waited for him to wake up. He looked at me, eyes unfocused. "What?"

Finally he figures out what is going on and he heads toward the kid, who gleefully runs away from him and resumes stabbing at stuff with the poker. I ask P if he wants me to get the steak knives out so that she can play with those. Or maybe the 409 and Windex?

This weekend maybe we'll let her swim unattended or play with a wild raccoon or something.

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