I love my kids, I just hate parenting
Sometimes I worry that I love my son too much.
I was thinking about that this Christmas, when I saw the haul of toys he received from his parents, grandparents, aunts, and uncles, and watched as he was indoctrinated into the Culture of More. It definitely made for a fun holiday – the joy of little kids can be contagious – but it also made me nervous.
There’s a reason we call it “spoiling.” Overindulgence breeds assholes.
My wife worships Christmas.
Once the Thanksgiving dishes are done, it’s all Yule all the time. Nothing but Christmas music in the car, nothing but Christmas movies on the television, nothing but Christmas shopping on the weekends.
And she was like this BEFORE we had the kid. Now that he’s here, and he’s alive enough to begin to understand Santa and presents and cookies and the tree and all that, not only has Mom and Buried’s Christmas-loving resolve strengthened, but I no longer have a Scroogey cane to stand on.
Especially on Christmas Eve, when there’s work to do!
Earlier this week I wrote about the ways my son is my puppet master. He often literally controls my body, forcing me to watch what he wants to watch, go where he wants to go, dance when he wants to dance, etc. It can be frustrating.
But I’m an adult and he’s a toddler. So while he gets a fair amount of leeway, since he’s both the cutest child of all time and the likely future of humanity (or its ruin, as indicated by the shadow he’s casting in this photo), he is really only able to control me when I let him control me.
Otherwise, I control him.
Every morning, when we ask my son what he wants to wear today, he says “Gabba!”
Every day. No matter that we’re deep into fall and his “Yo Gabba Gabba” shirt has short sleeves. He wants to wear it every day. I kind of suspect that he thinks “Gabba” means “clothes.”
“What do you want to wear today?”
“Clothes!”
“You got it, kid!”
But this Halloween, we took him at his word and went one further with his request. He wore a full-fledged DJ Lance Rock costume.
We are moving. From the cozy confines of Brooklyn to the Southern jungle of Raleigh, North Carolina.
With moving comes a variety of stresses and concerns. There’s a reason moving is the only thing on earth that’s actually worse than planning a wedding. Am I right, ladies?
Since we happen to be moving from a city with certain conveniences (such as being the GREATEST PLACE ON EARTH!) to an area somewhere below the Mason-Dixon line that may or may not have electricity and written language, we are forced to make a variety of complicated arrangements.
Not the least of which is acquiring an automobile.