I love my kids, I just hate parenting
Every once in a while, particularly during the back-to-school season, we see a flurry of blog posts and articles about allergies.
The posts typically concern one of two things, depending on the proclivities of the author:
1) Please don’t bring [this thing that my child is deathly allergic to] to school, I’m begging you! or;
2) Whatever, I don’t care if your kid dies.
My son has a pretty severe tree nut allergy. Guess which category this post falls into?
It’s rare to find a parent who didn’t measure the passage of time by juxtaposing pictures of their kid’s first day of school in September with their kid’s last day of school in June.
And then, with a mixture of pride (“He did it!”) and petulance (“He’s growing up too fast!”), they bemoan the passage of time, whine about how fast it’s all going, and bitch about how quickly kids grow up.
I call bullshit.
Last night, we had our neighbors over for a few drinks. Somewhere between my third and fourth beer, I forgot that I have a kid and a job and am thirty-eight, so I had three or four more beers. Now I want to die.
Thankfully, today is Friday, so I’m at work instead of sitting at home trying to occupy a four-year-old who wants me to pretend to be a firetruck-slash-dinosaur and get on my knees and chase him around the house all while holding my head and trying not to throw up.
Hungover parenting is not a lot of fun.
My kid is smart… maybe. It’s still hard to tell; he’s only four years old! Even Mozart was eating Play-Doh when he was four.
Kids are stupid. It’s one of the reasons they’re so annoying and stressful. But it’s also one of the perks.
I’ve said before that I can’t wait for my son to grow up, so I can see who he becomes. But lately I’ve been reconsidering.
I kind of like him dumb. Stupid kids are better!
My son’s impending entry into Kindergarten is causing a whole host of problems in my life. (Not the least of which will be his eventual ability to read the channel guide as I try to quickly scroll past the names of his garbage programs.)
It’s still six months away and yet it’s already negatively impacting my life. There are all sorts of schedules, and schedules mean planning, and I don’t like planning. I’m supposed to know what I’m doing six months in advance? I don’t even know what I did two days ago, and that was two days! Ago! (I went on a bar crawl, so what did you expect? I’m surprised I’m awake right now.)
But I’m a parent. Of a soon-to-be kindergartener. Planning has become an unavoidable part of my life. I mean, it’s even part of “planning” an escape.
It’s like I’m being mocked.