I love my kids, I just hate parenting
What is it with children and Cheerios?
My 6-year-old eats them, my baby attempts to eat them, they both spill them and play with them and throw them around. Meanwhile, my cupboard is full of them, my floor is littered with them, the backseat of my car is covered in them, and I’m constantly stepping on them.
I bet you are too. Because when you have kids, you have Cheerios. There’s no way around it.
*HUSBAND SERVICE ANNOUNCEMENT*
When your wife asks you how she looks, you must do the following:
1. Look her over
2. Look her over for a reasonable enough amount of time that your answer is credible
3. Don’t look her over for so long as to imply untoward scrutiny or the existence of flaws heretofore unseen and/or altogether nonexistent
4. Tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth
5. But don’t say anything except “You look great!”
I’m so naive!
Sure, I’ve only been the father of two children for a year, but many of my assumptions, my expectations, even some of my hopes about life with a second kid have already been dashed.
For example, I remember when I thought baby number two might actually prefer me.
Can’t we all just get along? Yeah, no. Especially not us parents.
We all parent differently. Even if our general philosophies are the same, we still parent differently, because we’re different people who have unique children. There is no blueprint we all follow because there’s no blueprint period. Real parenting isn’t about planning, it’s about adapting and improvising, and handling all the nonsense your kids throw at you.
So I’m not concerned if other people have different parenting styles from me. I already know nearly everyone does. Even my own wife! But there are a handful of qualities I look for in other parents, qualities that, if you have them, make me confident we’ll get along.
Everybody loves a rainy weekend.
You wake up a little later than normal, you stay in your pajamas a lot later than normal, you lounge in bed or on your couch with a big mug of hot coffee, under a blanket, and you watch some mindless TV, or a some movies you’ve seen a hundred times. It’s glorious.
Unless you have kids, in which case none of that will ever happen ever again for the rest of your entire life.
Because kids don’t let you be lazy.