When I called our insurance company to put our brand new, baby blue car on the policy, the agent asked, \u201cHow many miles are you planning to put on it?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cNone,\u201d I confessed. \u201cI\u2019m afraid to drive it.\u201d<\/p>\n

Our old car was riddled with dents and scratches. Naturally, I blamed our daughters, who\u2019d learned to drive on it.<\/p>\n

Would our pristine Baby Blue suffer the same fate?<\/p>\n

\u201cWe won\u2019t let them touch this one!\u201d I\u2019d vowed to my husband.<\/p>\n

In all honesty, though, I was responsible for at least half the damage to our old car. I had even dented its front left fender while pulling into the garage the very first day we drove it home from the dealer.<\/p>\n

The fact that our new baby was all-electric intensified my fears. The car was either eerily quiet or emitting weird beeps. We couldn\u2019t tell if the engine was on or off, or how to work the lights and windshield wipers. And it was so tiny!<\/p>\n

My husband and I felt just like we did as new parents coming home from the hospital with our perfect infant. Was she still breathing? What did those strange noises mean? How badly would we mess her up?<\/p>\n

Still, there\u2019s no going back. Just as kids can\u2019t remain in a bubble, cars can\u2019t stay in garages forever. Baby Blue just turned a year old, with close to 8,000 miles on it. Our daughters, now in their twenties, have traveled around the world a time or two. So far, everyone\u2019s made it through pretty much unscathed. There\u2019s a ding in the car\u2019s windshield, but I\u2019m happy to report it happened on my husband\u2019s watch. As for the dings our daughters have taken on, it\u2019s anyone\u2019s guess how they got there.<\/p>\n

In either case, life bangs you up a bit, but hopefully doesn\u2019t flatten you.<\/p>\n

And if anything big goes wrong with Baby Blue–well, that\u2019s what insurance is for!<\/p>\n

Too bad it doesn\u2019t cover raising kids!<\/p>\n

*<\/p>\n

That “first ding” fear with cars or kids?<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

When I called our insurance company to put our brand new, baby blue car on the policy, the agent asked, \u201cHow many miles are you planning to put on it?\u201d \u201cNone,\u201d I confessed. \u201cI\u2019m afraid to drive it.\u201d Our old … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"Adorable = Anxiety: Baby Blue","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[4,8],"tags":[506,507,508],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2F8Ch-pp","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/shrinkrapped.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1575"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/shrinkrapped.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/shrinkrapped.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shrinkrapped.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shrinkrapped.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1575"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/shrinkrapped.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1575\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1581,"href":"https:\/\/shrinkrapped.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1575\/revisions\/1581"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/shrinkrapped.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1575"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shrinkrapped.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1575"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shrinkrapped.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1575"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}