Dear Jane,

I totally feel you. My two year old threw herself onto the middle couch cushion in a completely hideous temper tantrum. Unfortunately, my laptop was on the cushion and she smacked her face right into it. My baby's first shiner. Then this evening she was so tired that she tried to sit down on the bathroom floor while I was brushing my teeth, smacking her mouth on the edge of the tub -- add a fat lip. What a weekend! And all on my watch.

Despite my husband's assurances, I can't help but feel like there must have been something I could have done. In addition to feeling like the worst parent ever, I had to bring her to ice skating lessons this morning. Every hockey parent in the rink is looking at me like I'm some kind of barbarian (irony not lost). And of course my lovely, sweet, darling cousin -- warm and trusting at 24 -- took a ton of pictures and posted them on facebook. Never even thinking about what she looks like in them, or what I look like in them. It didn't dawn on her that people might think the worst. 

There's my baby girl -- sitting on a bench in the rink lobby (which is totally indistinguishable from any institutional setting with scarred wooden benches bolted to the floor and grey concrete block walls in the background), stuffing vending machine animal crackers in her mouth, and looking like she's been out boozing hard all night and needs to be bailed out of jail. "They try to make me go to rehab, but I say no, no, no..."

I haven't had to take her out with the black eye and fat lip, yet. Wish me luck, or better yet -- leave me the contact for a good lawyer.