Dad Tries to Get ‘Cute Moment’ With Toddler on Camera—Instantly Regrets It

A doting dad learned a painful lesson after attempting to capture a sweet moment on camera with his 16-month-old daughter.

Connor Lodge, 25, from Essex in the U.K., was made to regret trying to film his toddler Calla as they played on the floor of her bedroom together.

“I was trying to capture a cute moment between me and my daughter,” Lodge told Newsweek. “I thought she would engage with me in the cute ways that she normally does; for example, giving me one of her big, cheesy grins, or one of her cuddles that she loves to give.” Unfortunately, Calla had other ideas.

Parenting can be a painful experience in every sense of the word. In 2020, a survey of 1,047 moms and dads with kids ranging from 0 to 17 found that 65 percent had experienced some form of physical pain related to parenting.

The poll, which was commissioned by massager company Wahl, found the main cause of pain for parents with kids up to the age of 5 was related to lifting baby gear.

However, as the kids grew older, the parents surveyed cited activities like playing with their children as the leading cause of pain. Playtime certainly proved to be painful for Lodge in this instance, as the resulting footage, posted to TikTok under the handle @con.lodge showed.

In the clip, Lodge can be seen lying down on the carpet in front of Calla, preparing to capture a cute interaction between the pair. His daughter has other ideas, though, and before Lodge can ever get his words out, decides to bash him in the face with her Sophie the Giraffe squeaky teething toy.

The remainder of the video captures Lodge’s pained reaction to being hit in the face. “It hurt a fair amount. I must admit initially it was just the shock,” he said. “But the hoof of the giraffe toy caught my bare eye, so it was sore for a few minutes.”

Despite things not turning out as he might have wished, Lodge decided to share the clip to social media. “I wanted to show people who don’t have kids, or who might have one on the way, that it’s not always as easy as it looks to capture these cute moments,” he said.

This isn’t the first time Lodge’s attempts at capturing a cute moment with Calla have been hilariously derailed by his daughter, but he’s not blaming her and is keen to stress these are isolated incidents that just add to the fun of being a parent.

“My fiancée Jordan never seems to have the same issue, but I have to watch where I’m laying my head when I’m playing with her,” Lodge said. “She is just a toddler who’s learning how to play, and now we are quick to teach her that it’s not how we want to play.”

Even so, Lodge said he is definitely learned from his mistakes when it comes to
“laying in vulnerable positions around a toddler with a hard toy in their hand.”

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