Keeping the lid on...

I may be a bad mother. I have to accept this. I know all mothers probably think the same thing at some point but I do have a reason behind this thought and that reason is partly to do with this blog and partly to do with a video of C I posted on YouTube which suddenly has had 1900 views and rising - clearly more than I have readers of this blog, friends and family all combined. Now, in the wonderful world of YouTube where videos get millions of views, this is hardly anything to write home about however it does beg the questions: Am I pimping my son? Why am I putting him out here in the great wide web? What exactly are my motives?

Overtly, of course, they are so friends and family can keep up with every little motion Charlie makes (and for those of you agog to know the next thing, he is now trying very hard to drink from a beaker). Covertly, there are Bad Mother Motives and chief amongst these is the retention of my sanity. Somehow, after a day full of shouting and poo and brocolli on the walls, writing about it helps to put it all back in it's box and stops me from doing something absolutely heinous to my darling boy such as, oh, say, letting him crawl backwards into the dust bunnies under the sofa or putting him out in the garden to eat dirt or... well perhaps I should make up something that I haven't already written down in my book of Bad Mothering.

There is more, I accept, to being a Bad Mother then posting one's day up online or letting one's offspring play with the dimmer switch on the floor lamp (given that he has yet to develop bunny teeth and an urge to chew through electical cables) however I wonder if these things are the Thin End of the Wedge and whether or not I will find myself in a few weeks time taking him to the park wearing nothing but a wet nappy and one sock or leaving him to roll off the bed alone while I slip out to get a manicure.

Sometimes when all I have to do is run to the corner for milk I wonder for a split second while dressing him, unfolding the push-chair, finding his shoes, strapping him in and putting on the rain cover if perhaps he would be just fine playing in his cot for that three minutes - after all, by the time I get him out of the door I could have been out and back. But then reality hits with all the 'what-if's?' - What if he chokes? What if I'm hit by a car? What if I lose my keys? What if??? But, for that split second I have seen into the tabloid world of the mother who went to Spain for a week leaving her baby in the care of her 10 year old, or those parents who slip to the pub for an hour leaving the baby alone in the house. I reckon it all started slowly for them, too. First they ignored the nappy cry and realised the baby would be ok, then they left it alone in the livingroom and it was ok, then they slipped out to the garden and it was ok... suddenly they've bought the plane tickets and forgotten the baby.

Ultimately, I think that writing it down and trying to make it amusing takes the sting out of the pooey days and perhaps saves poor little Charlie from a life of eating worms and so I am not going to be overly paranoid about the number of strangers watching him laugh at a fart cushion. I am not however going to let either of us do anything more ridiculous than that. Hopefully.