I love my kids, I just hate parenting
A few weeks ago, the Buried clan went on a road trip during Detective Munch’s spring break.
We spent a few days in Washington D.C. and then spent the latter half of the week, and Easter weekend, with Mom and Buried’s family in South Carolina. Then we drove the full fourteen hours back while The Hammer battled a fever and the world’s most prolific runny nose and we battled headaches, frustration, and traffic.
Spring break ain’t what it used to be…
Children are expensive.
And not just like, “Wow, I didn’t expect it to cost that much!” expensive, more like, “Wow, the cost of this item is really cramping my style, I should probably return it!” expensive, and maybe even “I bet if I sold this I’d make a fortune!” expensive.
They’re the kind of expensive that makes you question your life choices. Parents need some guilt-free spending to offset our crushed dreams.
Christmas is coming, which gives us all a chance to show our families and friends how much we love them through the joyful act of giving, and receiving, gifts.
It also allows the cruel and vindictive people in our lives to torture us by gleefully providing our children with terrible, terrible toys, whether they’re loud, include hundreds of tiny pieces, require hours of manual labor to assemble, or are just plain annoying.
Sometimes, we parents even do it to ourselves, because indulging our kids is part of the deal. But even so, that doesn’t mean we can’t hold a grudge against the people who created some of these infernal toys to begin with. Which is what I’m about to do.
When I found out I was going to be a dad, I had a lot of plans.
Not “this will never happen” stuff or “I’m going to do things the right way! stuff – I knew even before he was born that my pre-parent ideas were unlikely to stand up to reality. But I had a lot of ideas about what I wanted to teach my son, especially when it comes to pop culture stuff I planned to pass down.
Some of them are still pending – I still can’t wait to show my kids The Karate Kid and introduce them to “The Wire” when they’re older – but a few of them have taken hold with Detective Munch already, particularly Star Wars, superheroes, and The Beatles.
So while I appreciate Netflix’s cool new show, I’m happy to say I beat “Beat Bugs” to the punch!
A kid in my high school biology class once asked our teacher if a woman could give birth to a snake. And we’ve been close friends ever since!
Thankfully, none of Mom and Buried’s ultrasounds have shown a cobra. And I already have a kid. So even though I’m not a biology teacher, and it’s been five years since I’ve had a newborn baby around and I don’t remember much about how to care for one, I have a pretty good idea of what’s coming (sometime in the next two weeks).
Yet despite the fact that I have an existing child on whom to base my expectations for my second baby’s personality and appearance, in reality, I don’t have a clue. And that’s got me pretty excited.