You know, I really wanted to start writing today on my BlogHer ’09 experience in Chicago. But first I wanted to share a story with you that is actually pretty gross. It involves something that my baby girl ate. So if you are eating any food right now, wait till later to read this post.

Anyways. So, before you become a mom, you have lofty dreams of how sweet and beautiful babies are. And they are sweet and beautiful. But what you do not realize is that these little persons carry with them the ability to do things that bring with them the “ewwwwww” factor.

And I am not talking about dirty diapers, folks. This goes beyond that.

My youngest daughter is not quite a year old. She is very curious and she does not give up easily. She is also walking now and so is very mobile. One thing children her age do quite a bit of is pick things up off of the floor and stick them straight into the mouth.

Well, my daughter does this a lot. More so than my other children. We sweep and vacuum every day and she still manages to find things. She has great eyesight, that one. I have picked out of her mouth lint and old pieces of sausage, as well as beads, paper, crayons, play dough, thread, and other things that I still do not know what they were.

That is all very gross and nasty as it is. Eating off of the floor turns my stomach. Unless it can be picked up and rinsed/washed off – think runaway grapes – it goes in the trash. The five-second rule does not apply in my book.

Back to my story.

Sunday evening I was picking up in our sitting room. My baby was toddling around doing the whole “Step, step, fall, get back up” routine. As I was picking up crayons I turned my back for 2.6 seconds. That was my mistake. As I turned back around, I noticed daughter again was chewing on something.

I walked toward her. She was standing there with a big grin on her face, the one that melts my heart. I call that her Mommy Smile because she does save her biggest smiles for mama. The closer I got I noticed more chewing and a little black thing on her lip.

I was inwardly complaining about having to yet again fish some unknown object from my daughter’s mouth. Sticking my finger amongst all those sharp teeth is dangerous. And painful.

Sitting down next to her I discover horrifying fact #1: that black object on her lip? Yeah. It’s a bug leg. My stomach turns at the memory.

I quickly realized that that leg belonged to a fly. A fly. Those things that eat rotting garbage and worse. Yes, a fly.

Gag.

I shudder as I realize she is still chewing on something.

I tell her “Baby, spit it out into Mama’s hands.” Okay. I was not ready for what came out though the fly leg should have clued me in.

Baby girl obediently spit out into my hand a fly body. No more legs or wings were attached. Just the body. I do not get sick easily. But this time I nearly did. I seriously thought I would lose my dinner. Of course, mama was running toward the sink with slobbery fly body in one hand, at the same time scooping up happy smiling baby, all the while yelling “SHE ATE A FLY, SHE ATE A FLY” to my husband.

That was a moment when I seriously wished that someone would invent a safe, non-toxic, edible version of Lysol. I would pay a lot of money for that stuff. I might even buy stock.

I am still recovering from that. The recovery will take a while. Actually, I don’t know if I’ll ever recover from that one.

Please tell me that I am not the only mother whose child eats stuff not made for human consumption. Please.