I love my kids, I just hate parenting
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.
My parents live in Connecticut, about two hours away. We often take a family road trip to visit for the weekend, especially in the summer, because they have a pool — and also because my six-year-old prefers Grandma to me.
My wife and I dread those trips. Not as much as we dreaded them when we lived ten hours away, but at least back then we only had the one kid to worry about. Sure, two hours is a lot shorter than ten, but that eight-hour difference is more than made up for by the nightmare that is a screaming baby in the backseat.
We had a family road trip or three over the long Thanksgiving weekend. And, thanks to the approach Mom and Buried and I take, we survived them all. You can too!
There are a lot of posts going around from shell-shocked, well-meaning parents, discussing ways to talk to our kids about the fact that Donald Trump was elected President. (This is a good one.) There’s much to unpack: how he won, why he won, what this means for the future of our country, what it means about the present of our country, etc.
I have no answers to any of that (except the last one: there are a lot of ignorant and/or racist and/or misogynistic and/or short-sighted people in America). My oldest is only six years old, and while Detective Munch may not know much about politics or elections, he knows a bully when he sees one. He knows Trump is a mean, angry name-caller, even without the “benefit” of understanding the constant bigotry, misogyny, and xenophobia that comes out his mouth.
What he doesn’t know is why the country would elect someone like Donald Trump to lead it. And neither do I. So I’m not going to bother trying.
Read more about How to Distract Kids From “President Donald Trump” …
I was a stay-at-home dad once, for almost two years. I wasn’t a fan. But that wasn’t my wife’s fault.
It was boring. It was isolating. It was exhausting. That wasn’t my wife’s fault either. (It was my son’s.)
Yes, I bonded with Detective Munch and we had plenty of good times, but I’d be lying if I said I didn’t prefer going to work to being home all day. And it’s partly because I remember those days that now that my wife is home with a new baby, I’m determined to help her out as much as I can.
Read more about Can’t Stay-At-Home Moms Get A Little Love? …
My second kid turned eight months old yesterday. He has a few teeth, we’ve started easing him into baby food (with disastrous results), and he’s looking to crawl any minute, which is going to severely complicate my life and increase my stress level.
Meanwhile, the original kid started first grade last week. He is about to lose a few teeth, tried oysters for the first time over the summer (loved them!), and, most significantly, is dangerously close to being able to read the channel guide, thus preventing me from lying about his shows not being on.
This is all very momentous, obviously, but when do my kids’ developmental milestones start benefiting me?