When Life Hands You Lemons...

The one where "Life" is your 1 year old daughter, and "Lemons" involves cat vomit and maggots.

I don't think there has ever or will ever exist a more adorable 1 year old girl than this one...

Lets just focus on her dark innocent eyes, her cute little mouth, her soft fluffy hair, the way she looks crammed into a Bonds Wondersuit for the last winter any of my kids will ever fit into a beautiful cuddly soft Bonds Wondersuit... yeah, she's mine and she's adorable.

Now that we have that out of the way, let me tell you something...

THIS CHILD, this same innocent looking, sweet as pie child handed me a handful of cat vomit crawling with maggots that she found on the driveway because she wanted me to see the "snakes" in it. Uh huh. What a way to start your Tuesday.  Of course I didn't take her offered gift.

You know how you read books and well meaning people tell you to consider before the time comes how you will handle certain situations. What will you say the first time one of the kids asks where babies come from? What will you do if your child hits another child on purpose? What will you say when the times comes to discuss the death of a loved one with your kids? These are all well and good to prepare for but no one ever told me to prepare for the day my little girl handed me a handful of cat vomit filled with maggots!

So not having prepared for this scenario I whacked it from her hand and then held her by the wrists and I took her to clean up while I freaked out about whether I had actually seen as much as I thought I had and had I perhaps missed any of the action and had she put any in her mouth? (the kid sampled the delicacy that is a gecko tail removed by the screen door, and also some frog poop, she's not shy on this stuff) Thankfully I was able to reassure myself that no, I had witnessed her squatting down, placing her apple on the ground and picking something up which I had at the time assumed to be dried grass or something that is slightly more normal to find on the driveway.

So I cleaned her up, threw out her apple which was still sitting next to the pile and as I was strapping her in the car her brothers enquired as to what all the fuss was about? So I explained. Rookie mistake (remember I had never prepared for maggot filled cat vomit so I was flying blind here). Each of them had to get out of the car, go find the pile, inspect it far too closely, then gag and wretch as they headed back to the car. How we got to school without anyone giving their breakfast an encore appearance I don't know!

This is real life, McTavish style.

Hope you weren't eating breakfast when you read this.