I love my kids, I just hate parenting
My son has had a free ride long enough.
He’s had five years and several months of being the only game in town. But last month, things changed. His baby brother arrived, and now if Detective Munch wants to stay in our good graces, he needs to step up his game.
Luckily, I have the perfect solution.
When we first got The Hammer home, we marveled at how quiet he was. That was a fun half hour!
Turns out he’s actually loud, especially when he hits the so-called “witching hour,” which is the technical term for that specific period of the day when your baby really wants you to know he’s pissed about this whole “not in the womb” thing and he blames YOU.
My five-year-old is more of a whiner, but really, what’s the difference? It’s all a bunch of high-pitched squealing. Even Mom and Buried is a little emotional lately, which is understandable. Her hormones must be going crazy, just a few weeks after giving birth and also with all the catching-up-on-drinking she’s gotta do!
Lately, I’m just surrounded by criers. So I decided to have some fun with it.
The Hammer is not even two weeks old and he’s already disrupting our lives.
We love having him around, of course (he’s adorable, and all he does is sleep! What’s not to love?) but the reality of living with an infant is that whatever routine you had – and we had one that worked for close to five years – is immediately thrown in the shredder.
The new baby has changed the way we sleep, changed the way eat, changed the way live, and changed the way we treat each other (sorry, that was Tupac). But perhaps nothing has changed more than how we parent our five-year-old.
More power to our kids, but nothing makes a person hate snow more than being an adult. There are only so many times you can take your kids sledding and ice skating and snowman-building, especially when you have things to do!
No matter how outdoorsy you are, in the winter you’re sure to be spending more and more time indoors with a collection of five-hour-energy side-effects in tiny human form, slowly but surely exhausting every single entertainment option available in an effort to keep the kids occupied. And keep yourself from turning into Jack Nicholson in The Shining. It’s not easy.
And it’s only going to get worse for me, now that I have a newborn too.
This isn’t about dangerous toys. I honestly wouldn’t even know where to begin such a list. When I was a kid, if you wore a bike helmet you were King Dork of Nerd Mountain. Nowadays, you need a helmet just to ride the school bus or you’ll end up suing the NFL.
The standards for safety have changed so drastically that I’ve pretty much stopped giving my kid anything that has corners. (I’m not even joking: my son has never had a Saltine. NOTHING BUT RITZ.)
Instead, this list is about the worst gifts for kids. Not all kids, like I said, I can’t speak to that. These are the worst gifts to buy your own children.