As if parents of young children don't have enough to worry about...

...expensive umbrella strollers are amputating kids' fingertips!
http://www.cpsc.gov/cpscpub/prerel/prhtml11/11222.html


And speaking of worrying about young children, yesterday was a classic in our "Life with Reece" show. I had a meeting that was going to go a little long, so I asked Greyson to pick Reece up from the bus stop. I even called my neighbor who is at the bus stop most days meeting her daughter, to let her know what the plan was, just in case.

So, I did everything a good parent should do, right? Greyson is very responsible, has gone with me a few times so the bus driver knows who he is, and it was his bus drop off for five years. What could possibly go wrong, you ask? Well, it was a perfect storm of errors.

First, there was a substitute bus driver. Then, Reece forgot to get off the bus. Greyson and my neighbor asked if Reece was on, and the driver emphatically said that he wasn't. Greyson then thought Reece still had karate after school (which WAS on Thursdays but ended last week), so he headed home while assuring my neighbor that he would call me to let me know what was going on. I got the message a few minutes later, as I was leaving my meeting 20 minutes away from home, and after talking to Greyson, I called Reece's school. They checked with his teacher to confirm he got on the bus, and then they called the bus depot (or whatever it's called), and found out he was still on the bus. I had to call Greyson back and tell him to run back to the bus stop so he would be there when the bus brought Reece back again. And then worry until I knew they were both home safely.

The thing is, I wasn't actually very concerned that it wouldn't end up just fine, only because we refer to Reece as "the cockroach" in the sense that he would be the one person to come out of a nuclear war intact. Somehow, that child will survive and probably benefit in some way. He has a lot of his father in him.