Friday, January 10, 2014

Good News: Your Kids Will Live

It seems these days we can't turn on the TV or browse through our Facebook news feeds without coming across some article or some expert testimony regarding all the ways we are potentially harming our children.

We're always being told we can do better. Do more. No wonder moms never feel like we're good enough. Because as soon as we start feeling competent we turn around and are confronted with evidence to the contrary. Once you learn the basic rules of parenting those f'ing bastards go off and change the manual.

If I had another baby I wouldn't know if I should front face the car seat, back face the car seat or put the car seat on the roof...

Well, let me tell you right now, I'm not the person who is here to tell you how to keep your kids in the safest, cushiest, most fantastic bubble of them all.

I'm the person who is here to tell you all about the things your kids can live through...

For example, you're kids can use three different types of pacifiers, breast feed, bottle feed, guzzle formula, eat only breast milk, take a bottle from you, your husband, the dog, the old guy down the road...and they will live.

Your kid can fall out of an infant swing when they are four months old because you thought you strapped him in but actually didn't...and they will live (well, they'll live till five at least cause that's how old Carter is and he's not had any complications from that so far.)

Your kids can suck on crayons and live.

Your kids can go outside in negative temperatures without gloves and live...and then when they're crying about how they can't feel their fingers you get to say "I told you so, you little know it all jerk!"

Your kids can walk barefoot from the car to the house through puddles on a rainy day because, even though you told them not to, they kicked off their shoes in a fit of rage on the way home from a friend's house. (Bonus to this one: they will never do that again.)

Your kids can have weeks where you and your spouse have this conversation:

"Have the kids had any vegetables this week?"

"Ummm...ketchup?"

Your kids can eat off the floor and live. Grant spent a good part of his infancy eating off the floor. I would have Carter in the high chair, dropping Cheerios left and right, and little baby Grant would crawl around and eat the debris. And I would think "Score! This feeds the baby AND cleans the floor!" And he's alive. I promise.

Your kids can come home from Nana's house and tell you they had cookies, cupcakes, donuts and candy and then proceed to buzz around your house with the crazy whacked out look of an addict who's maybe had one hit too many. And they will live. Well, let me clarify, they will live through the sugar rush...I don't make any promises that you won't kill them when they're in this state. (Also, Mom? I've taken out a bounty on your head for this incident. Watch your back bitch!)

Your kids can only do crafts at school because you fucking HATE crafts...and they'll live.

Your child can wear pajamas to his brother's kindergarten drop off every day because they refuse to get dressed with any sort of urgency and you refuse to exert the effort required to make them. And also you're jealous.

And finally...you can catch your kid sticking his fingers into the margarita salt you have in your cabinet and licking them and he'll live. And know what else? When he's of age he's going to have excellent taste in cocktails!

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