I love my kids, I just hate parenting
When I lived in Boston and NYC, this weekend’s St. Paddy’s celebration was a big deal. But now, I live in the south – I’m not sure they’ve even heard of the Irish – AND I have a two-year-old. Day-drinking my way through St. Patrick’s Day is a lot harder with a toddler.
Even one who has got some Irish in him. (And has been there!)
“Little kids are sponges.”
You hear it all the time, and it’s true. My son’s vocabulary increases every day, and most of what he’s learning he gets right from Mom and Dad, such as his first “curse” word, the relatively innocuous “dammit!” Needless to say, we’ve had to become a lot more careful about the words we use. It’s a bit of a pain.
But there’s a flip side to that coin. Sure, he parrots a lot of stuff we don’t even realize we’ve said around him, or don’t necessarily want him to be saying, but we can also train him to provide some entertainment. For example…
Before I became a parent, I made a lot of blanket statements about what I would and wouldn’t do should that day come.
At the top of the list? Putting a leash on my child.
A year and a half in, dealing with an unruly toddler who would like nothing more than to run into traffic or down a spiral staircase or into the maws of a giant piece of machinery, I am thisclose to putting the kid in a cat carrier.
And after the incident last weekend, a leash is starting to seem like the most reasonable thing in the world.