I love my kids, I just hate parenting
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.
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.
You think the worst is over.
You got the kid home from the hospital, you (or your wife) managed to survive labor, you endured the first couple of months of constant wake-ups and middle of the night feedings, and you’ve finally reached the point where the kid is sleeping through the night.
You did it! Success! This baby stuff is a breeze! You start getting a little more sleep, and you finally start feeling like yourself again; you actually, somehow, inexplicably, start thinking about having another baby. After all, you can take two to three months of no sleep. It ain’t no thing!
Right?
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” …