Baby Steps

Kids do the darndest things. I wish I could market this so-called adorableness like Bill Cosby did, but I am just too embarrassed. Why would I be embarrassed, you ask? Well, Cooper has a knack for letting it all hang out!

A few weeks ago Cooper and I ran to the store to get some ingredients for dinner that night. As I was getting into the checkout line, he started to cry. I picked him up from the cart and held him while I paid. The checker was a man of about 21 or 22 and he was just a-smiling. He never said anything to me and I couldn't figure out why he was grinning so big -- I just figured he was trained to always smile at customers, like I was when I worked in retail. Well, it wasn't until I had paid and was putting Coop back in the cart that I realized that, in picking him up out of the cart and holding him, he had managed to get the front of my shirt unbuttoned! How he did it I will never know, but that checker got a big eyeful of me in all my glory that day. Now I know why he enthusiastically told me to have a nice day and come back soon. It wasn't the first time my kid did something embarrassing, and it won't be the last.

I have been peed on in Walmart three times now, always while we are getting the last of our items and are on our way to the checkout line. The wet spot always shows up on the front of my shirt, right in the middle, for everyone to see. I swear that Cooper knows what he is doing and does it on purpose -- and I'm not the only one.

My friend's son Josh told her that he had to go to the bathroom. They were at a public park and there wasn't a restroom in sight. She told Josh to just go behind that tree real quick. Well, 10 minutes later when she heard all these cars honking, she realized that Josh wasn't around. She looked and found him with his bottom facing the road as he took a nice big No. 2, with tons of traffic driving by, waving and honking. She was mortified! She hurried him up and hustled all four kids quickly into the car and drove off with out even saying goodbye to the group she was with.

Another friend had her daughter Lilly exclaim loudly during a church service that she was bored and asked if she could close her eyes like daddy. Of course all eyes turned to their pew and her sleeping husband. My friend tried to hush Lilly, who of course was having none of it, and who then stamped her little foot and yelled, "What are you going to do? Jesus is watching!"

I think kids are born with a gene perfect for embarrassing their parents, and I think that it doesn't stop until they are 18 or maybe older. I can remember my mom getting embarrassed by my sister and me, and I am sure that I have years and years of embarrassment to come. I wonder how my mom put up with our loud mouths, and I am thankful that (for now) Cooper can't talk!

Kristen Pind, a native of small-town Gower, Mo., came to Southeast Missouri State University with big dreams of being the next Katie Couric or Diane Sawyer. She never thought that at age 25, she'd be married with a baby and living in Cape Girardeau. Keep up with Kristen's adventures as a first-time mom -- one who's still a girl trying to figure out how her own life fits together. Turns out, she's living a dream she never knew she had, and loving every minute of it. Kristen invites moms of all types to find her "Baby Steps" page on Facebook.