I recognize its been a while since I’ve blogged for The Dolly Mama, but I committed to myself when I started this blog that it was going to be for fun, a release, a stress-reliever. Lately, I’ve been a little lacking in inspiration, so I decided it was just time for a little brake! I don’t want to bore my readers to death with contrived or forced blogs just to keep up with a schedule. However, I would like to get back to a more regular schedule, so…we’ll see if I can make that a reality.
If you have kids, don’t you sometimes just look at them and ask yourself, “Hmmmm, I wonder how I am going to screw them up?” For all of you perfect parents out there, this may be completely irrelevant, but honestly, I’m just weird enough to wonder that. Here is an example of some of the things that lead me to ask this question:
1. My 4 year-old picks up knives and strikes a Michael Myers pose…frequently.
2. My 7 year-old wants to dress up as the Grimm Reaper…every Halloween.
3. My 4 year-old thinks jumping from the couch to a rolling desk chair 5 feet away is fun.
4. I fall victim to using the TV as a babysitter.
5. My 4 year-old has already taught himself to burp on command.
6. It takes me at least 12 times to say his name before my 7 year-old acknowledges that I am speaking to him.
7. I frequently complain about the fact that I can’t find my corkscrew in front of them.
8. When given the opportunity to “free draw” in class at school my 7 year-old almost always brings home pictures of some kind of monster, alien or a person missing a body part.
9. I don’t always make them brush their teeth or take them to the dentist on a regular basis.
10. My 4 year-old knows most of the words to Baby Got Back, and sings it often…and I laugh.
11. My 7 year-old thinks the funniest thing is jumping out of a dark corner and scaring the crap out of his little brother and his mommy. Mommy does not think its funny.
12. I almost always forget to look in their backpacks until right before they leave for school.
13. My 4 year-old mentally keeps track of the size of his poopies and compares one to the next.
So, you get the picture. One of the reasons I believe that parenting is so difficult is that we have no way to really track our children’s progress when it comes to mental stability or character. Most of the time we have no idea how we faired as parents until our children grow to adults. We all make mistakes, we all struggle to find the perfect balance of discipline, fun, and teaching moments. Let’s just keep our fingers crossed that our kids will learn from our mistakes and that Griffin won’t end up wearing a white mask and carrying around a machete when he is a grown man.
I think it sounds like you are doing a great job!
Joy
I think this is really cute and I doubt seriously that Griffin will grow up to become an ax-murderer (unless, of course, his older brother does, then Griffin will want to copy him. Hopefully by adulthood, he’ll be over the “whatever big brother does, eats, has, I want it too” stage!! LOL!