In an interesting turn of events, the aforementioned “parent of an annoying child who will not leave you alone,” and we (as in, CareerMom) came to a very acceptable compromise: We’ll drop our child off at your house and let him play and then we’ll pick him up later!

Worked for her, and worked for us. Although, as suspected, when CareerMom went to pick him up last night, she was very “Chatty Kathy” and wouldn’t let her leave. I suspected that might be the case and suggested that instead, I go pick him up, but CareerMom insisted.

Fine by me.

Anyway, what with only having one child to deal with last night, CareerMom and I felt liberated. She skipped the gym; I ordered a veggie pizza, fixed a salad and cut up a mango for desert. We ate like kings. MLE was a pretty good eater too and didn’t make much of a fuss. The house was quiet.

And…CareerMom was lookin’ H. O. T.!

And…the only other person in the house was a 17 month old whom, I suspect, is too old to really process some adult things.

Things happened, as they will when two consenting adults are alone together, and not forced to lock themselves behind closed doors lest prying, not-ready-for bed-yet eyes, see them.

So, while the adults were busy, MLE played by himself in the general vicinity; only getting too close for comfort once or twice. Generally speaking, he seemed oblivious to what was going on, and since we did it as inconspicuously as possible, if he tries to tell his other toddler buds today what mommy and daddy were doing, it’s going to sound like we were just hugging while sitting on the couch or something. Nobody’ll believe him!

Was that wrong? I tried to tell myself that surely among the billions of parents there have been in the world, we surely weren’t the first (nor the last) to do something like this around their child. I mean, never in a million years would we try this with MLI, but he’s 4 and would immediately know something was going on, but a 17-month old?

When CareerMom left, he seemed fine. He played “dive off the coffee table onto the pillows” until I turned on “Pirates of the Carribean” at which point he stopped, crawled into my lap, grabbed his binky and watched Cap’n Jack whoop some crustacean butt until I put him to bed.

But if you’re not too embarrassed, have you done anything like this?