A few weeks ago, I brought home a vintage playpen. I thought it would be cute as a photo prop for some shots of Eli for his 2nd birthday, but then I remembered that I have free-range babies who can and will escape all of the things. My hopes were squashed almost immediately after I put him in it and the playpen sat in the middle of the kitchen because, well, Eli doesn’t stop moving and neither do I.

A few hours later, Mom came upstairs to get a glass of water. The kitchen was dark but it’s a pretty straight path to the refrigerator unless there is, oh, say a vintage playpen in the middle of the room. Being that I did in fact have a vintage playpen sitting in the middle of the room, Mom ran right into the wood contraption. It hit her at about waist height, which surprised her I suppose, and she fell face-first into the playpen. She caught herself but was left doing a handstand of sorts, unable to get her legs back down on the ground. So picture this with me: My mom doing a handstand in a playpen.

I. Cannot. Stop. Laughing.

Ada saw the whole thing. Lucky dog. I just have to imagine it.

We put the playpen out at our yard sale this weekend as a way to make peace with Mom, who apparently didn’t find this whole thing as funny. But I got one more good laugh out of it: I swear, I overheard Travis trying to talk someone into buying it by explaining that it was a great mother-in-law trap.