Adventures in Parenting, Chapter 1: Why You Should Never Show Your Friends How to Use a Video Baby Monitor

Just for fun, we decided to create an ongoing, open-ended series called “Adventures in Parenting” to document those hilarious stories that deserve to be remembered and shared as we navigate the unknown world (to us) of child rearing.

Parenthood is a lot of things, but it is not dull. As first time parents, we are constantly finding ourselves in unexpected scenarios that remained uncharted before children. The learning curve is ridiculously high and if you don’t learn to laugh at yourself, you will probably go crazy. We will begin our “Adventures in Parenting” saga with why you should never show your friends how to use a video baby monitor.When Caleb was approximately 7 months old, our great friends Ashley and Brenton came to visit to see our new home/meet Caleb for the first time. In the course of conversation, we demonstrated some of our cool, modern baby gadgets including a video baby monitoring device. On our particular video monitor, one of the many neat features is the ability to move the camera side-to-side from a remote location. Later that evening, Sean went upstairs to give Caleb a bath. About two minutes after they left, I heard him yell “LITTLE HELP!!” in a very alarmed voice. I ran upstairs to our master bathroom to find Caleb completely covered in poop and Sean holding him at arms length in disgust. We didn’t have any wet wipes in the master bathroom, so I told Sean we should run down the hall to Caleb’s room and together we could tag team it and clean Caleb up fast. For those of you who have children, I think you will concur that “blow outs” are best tackled by two parents, not one.

Oh…here’s probably the appropriate place to mention a key piece of information – Sean was butt naked. At that point in time, it was still more convenient for him to just get in the bath with Caleb to wash him (we never did like the infant bath tubs, so awkward…plus it was good father/son bonding time). I assured Sean we would hurry and everything would be fine since I knew Brenton and Ashley were out of view in our family room downstairs. He agreed, so we quickly ran down the hall and as we were cleaning up Caleb’s blow out, a sixth sense came over me. As it slowly dawned on me that I had left the remote control for the monitor in the family room, AND that Ashley and Brenton could hear on the monitor that we were in Caleb’s room, AND that we had previously instructed them on how it works, AND that they are incredibly mischievous pranksters, I turned around to see the camera swiftly rotating from facing the crib over to the changing table where we were standing. I lunged towards the camera yelling “AH!! NO!! he’s naked, he’s naked!!” Unfortunately, I’m pretty positive they thought I was referring to Caleb since the camera continued revolving with zero hesitation.

To this day, they swear they did not see Sean’s birthday suit…but I have some serious doubts since they will no longer look Sean in the eye. Just kidding! What a great laugh though 🙂 And just in case you’re wondering – yes, thenceforth we had a ready supply of wet wipes in the master bathroom.

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Melissa Felker

I blog to share my life, entertain, inspire, inform, encourage, challenge (both myself and others), and of course, for personal therapy - haha! I love to write about meaningful experiences and a wide range of topics I find interesting. I particularly enjoy sharing life in a raw and barely censored fashion because I highly value authenticity.

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