Monday, March 23, 2009

now I'm an expert at knowing that I know nothing

Before I had kids, I was the BEST parent. I had all kind of brilliant ideas about parenting children, and I could clearly tell you what other people were doing wrong. I had such insight into everyone else's mistakes- I had real skillz.

Then I had a baby.

Luckily, my first child ended up being incredibly accommodating, calm, sweet, and easy-going. He rarely cried, he ate like a champ, and best of all, he reinforced all of my previously held opinions about how easy parenting could be. Sure, there were some bumps in the road (like not sleeping through the night until he was a YEAR OLD), but the truth is that Gabe is a pretty flexible and reasonable kid.

Then I had ANOTHER baby.

Well. I'll wait here for you to stop laughing.

I'm pretty sure this child has been sent here to take me down a notch. Or 27 notches, maybe. She's probably going to eat nothing except white bread and cheetos, throw tantrums in the aisles of Target, and let herself out of the house and run around the neighborhood naked. I am soooo looking forward to the teenage years.

Luckily, she is pretty cute, and I have been humbled. Today we ran out of Josh's office after lunch with her SCREAMING like we were peeling her fingernails off. She screamed in the office, in the hallway, in the elevator, in the lobby, and all the way to the car until I started the engine and pulled away from the curb. She'd been fed, changed, tucked into her car seat, and she just didn't feel like sitting idly, so she screamed. Last year? I would have wondered what was wrong with that mother that didn't do anything. Today? I knew it wouldn't make a difference to attempt to comfort her, so I just walked faster until I reached the car.

Parenting is just a kick in the pants, huh?

3 comments:

kathy a. said...

oh, oh, oh -- i can testify!

thankfully, they are all born cute, and we remember every single cute moment.

Montreal Mama said...

Sometimes I don't know what I would do if my kids weren't just so damn cute any loveable. Especially Mr. Sean who is going through a destroy phase. This morning alone he dumped all the books off his bookshelves in his bedroom, dumped out the sock drawer in my bedroom, dumped out the toy chest in the playroom, emptied one or two drawers in the kitchen, dumped the cat water bowl into the cat food bowl, all in the span of 3 minutes. I'm sure I'm missing something. Oh yeah, he also dumped the dirty towel basket in the bathroom over.

I just keep telling myself that he's cute & adorable and he says "I'm sorry mommy". But then doesn't clean up or even offer to help. Argh!

Anonymous said...

Speaking of naked escapes... Last week I was in the garage grabbing something from the car. It was a nice day, so the garage door was open, and I'd left the inside door open so I could hear if anyone decided to set the house on fire in the 47 seconds I was outside. I heard a noise behind me, and before I could even work my way fully out of the car, Asparagus had grabbed her tricycle with the handle on the back and hightailed it into the street and a house and a half down. Oh, and naked. Yes. Wearing a sweater and socks and that was ALL thankyouverymuch. Gave the neighbors a good laugh, I'm sure!