Baby number three is on the way and I have spent the last month or more looking for the hardware to put our crib back together. The crib was stored in the attic with, what I assumed, were the nuts and bolts. They weren't there.... but where did I put them?
Over the following weeks, many conversations ensued between my wife, Jessica, and I as to where the hardware might be. I received a lot of flack about misplacing it and my response was "how do you know it was me that misplaced it. I could have very well put it in a logical place, one of the places I've already looked, and then you moved it during one of your cleaning or organizing sessions." As with all my rebuttles it got a smirk and then fell on deaf ears.
The search continued. I looked in the attic three times, i looked in the basement storage room at least four times, then the countless bins of baby clothes ready to be covered in baby vomit, pee, and poop, and I even looked in all the kid's closets and dresser drawers. Hardly a stone went unturned in my search, yet no hardware.
Jess did what only her nesting & planning ways could allow with only two and a half months before baby #3 joins us - she ordered a new kit of hardware for the crib - $43 for a small handful of nuts and bolts - . I made fun and just accepted my search and rescue fate: failed.
Tonight, I decided to put the crib together. I emptied the new hardware onto the floor, placed the rails and ends into their appropriate positions for assembly and then went to work. That's when I noticed the obvious flaw in my search and rescue plan. The hardware I've so excruciatingly sought was already attached to the crib, in its rightful place, waiting for its moment of glory to, once again, be part of its fully assembled self. Somehow, in the sad humor of the moment, I won. And even though I didn't see the hardware attached to the crib in the first place, spent hours looking everywhere for it, and ending up wasting $43 on replacment hardware, I won.
The agony of multiple early defeats pales in comparison to the minory victory I just had. I won the war with that crib. I endured and prospered in the end. You can say what you will and try to figure out how it was actually a victory but it doesn't matter. May the crib assembly gods be proud of me because I won.
Every parent knows that no matter how well they clean the kitchen floor there are always bits and pieces of food that get lodged in your socks.
This blog is dedicated to every parent who has wanted to ask their three year old "why?" but simply can't because they know the only
answer they'll receive is "I don't know."