playgroupsarenoplaceforchildren

When I met Tate twelve years ago I vividly recall him telling me that he was laid back.  Of course now I know that this was a bald-faced lie.  Laid back is exactly the opposite of how I’d describe him.  His complaining and pessimism are legendary, so much so that while most couples fight about money or sex, we regularly fight about his constant complaining and pessimistic outlook on life.

He’s quit using phrases like, “this is a disaster!!”, because I’ve threatened to run away from home if I he ever uttered it again.

I’m by no means (completely) perfect, but I do try to look at the bright side of things.   I try very hard not to complain too much, I try to stay positive.  I’m practically Miss Merry Sunshine!

That’s why I feel so awful about what I’m getting ready to complain about.

My vacation could have been better.

It pains me to even utter those words.  SERIOUSLY.  Poor me!  Me and my first world problems!  ¡Que terrible!  It must be so awful to get to go on vacation and have it not be perfect.  So many people in the world without food and my beach vacation “could have been better.”

So yeah, I feel ridiculous complaining about my vacation.  Nonetheless, I can’t help myself.

1.  My children acted like total a-double-s-holes for the vast majority of the time.  They freaked out over things like getting Sprite instead of chocolate milk when we went out to eat and having to ride on a horse drawn carriage through Savannah.   What horribly deprived children!  The constant need to correct their behavior ON VACATION where we were supposed to be having FUN completely drained me.

2.  Ella and I got stung by jellyfish the very first day of vacation.  We then learned that August is prime jellyfish season on Tybee Island and this year has been particularly bad.  Perfect!

3.  Our vacation rental wasn’t exactly what I thought it would be.  The “summer house” with a bed in the backyard was really an unairconditioned shed with a cot from 1940 that held a moldy thing on top masquerading as a mattress.

4.  Despite the beach house being advertised as “fully stocked,” we ran out of toilet paper less than 24 hours after arriving. (It REALLY pains me to complain about that, yet there it is.)

5.  MOSQUITOES the size of Montana.

6.  The sheets on our bed were satiny and stuck to our feet like velcro.

7.  The water tasted like what I’ve always imagine dirty feet to taste like.

I’m so ashamed by these petty complaints.  If I were a priest, I’d assign myself 4,000 Hail Mary’s and an order to volunteer my time at a homeless shelter or donate the equivalent cost of the vacation to a women’s shelter.

I’m no longer a practicing Catholic.  I guess I dodged that bullet.

Instead, as soon as I download and edit the bajillion pictures I took while on vacation, I’ll repent by writing about the good things.

I remember exactly how old I was when my mother allowed me to leave the house, roam the neighborhood, and not even bother to tell her where I was going, who I was going to be with, or who the parents were.   I remember this because IT NEVER HAPPENED.

When I was in elementary school, my parents knew (or had at least met) my friend’s parents.  If I were to walk to one of their houses, it was with the understanding that I would go straight there, I wouldn’t leave and go somewhere else without telling my mom, and while I was there, I’d be polite and respectful.

Mostly, I was a good kid, but I didn’t always follow those rules.  There were times that I remember leaving one friend’s house to go to another friend’s house, without calling to tell my mom, and feeling both exhilaration and the pit of fear in my stomach for breaking a major rule.  I’m sure that there were times I annoyed my friend’s parents by overstaying my welcome, or eating snacks, and drinking their juice boxes, but I can’t remember ever being purposely rude to a friend’s mom or dad.

We’ve become friends with a family in our neighborhood who have kids the same ages as Carson and Ella.   Down the street there is a family that also two kids the same ages as ours, but until recently we never saw them outside.  A few months ago, the five year old (I’ll call him Jared), whose parent’s we’ve never met, started coming down to knock on my neighbor’s door to play.  He would stay for several hours, only to leave when my neighbor would tell him it was time to go home.  Jared has also shown up in my neighbor’s fenced backyard, and tried to open their back door when they didn’t answer the front door.

My neighbors have also seen him roaming around the neighborhood alone on numerous occasions.

Jared has come over to my house a few times, usually with my friend’s son, Aiden.  Every time he comes over there is some sort of incident.  He ran over my son with our Power Wheels monster truck, literally RAN OVER him.  I know it was an accident, but I told Jared that he was no longer allowed to drive the truck because he couldn’t drive it safely.  When my husband dumped the water out of our baby pool because all of the boys were getting too rough, Jared threw a fit and kicked the pool, then sassed Tate when he told him that he wasn’t allowed to kick our things.

He’s told my neighbor and I to get him something to eat, or something to drink.  “…And be sure to put ice in it.”

These are just things that kids do.  The interactions between our boys are things that will happen, kids pick on one another, they’ll be too rowdy, accidents will happen.  I’d like to think that I’ve taught Carson to be polite to adults, but I can’t guarantee that he’d act like a model child if I weren’t there to watch…which is exactly the crux of this issue.

Where are Jared’s parents?

My friend let her son walk down to the Jared’s backyard today to play with water balloons.  From her backyard, she could watch them as they played.  About five minutes later, Jared’s dad came outside and told the boys that if they wanted to play, they needed to go back to Aiden’s house.

Apparently my neighbor (and sometimes me) have been designated Jared’s babysitter.

There are so many things wrong here.

1.  Jared’s parents do not know us and have never attempted to meet us.  I don’t even know what their names are.

2.  Jared has spent entire afternoons at our houses, HOURS, and neither of his parents have come outside to check on him.

3.  My neighbor and I don’t appreciate the assumption that OH!  Sure we’ll babysit your kid, feed your kid, and give your kid drinks for hours on end.

4.  My neighbor and I are worried about Jared’s safety since nobody, besides us, seems to be watching him.  He regularly crosses the street without looking, because he’s only FIVE-years-old and doesn’t have the best judgment.

5.  Jared is FIVE.

I admit that I don’t really like Jared much, but I know that Carson and Aiden enjoy playing with him.  My knee-jerk response is to make a rule that Jared’s not welcome at my house simply because he’s kind of a jerk and because he ran over my kid.  My softer side, the one that doesn’t want to shame a child who is only five-years-old, is to make sure that Jared understands our rules and to send him home only if he breaks those rules.

My neighbor and I both are unsure how to handle the situation as a whole.  We don’t feel comfortable being responsible for Jared, we don’t want to become his default babysitters, but we don’t really know what we should say to his parents.  It’s not like we want to say, “Hey, we watch your kid for hours, you should take a turn and watch our kids, too.”  Um, no.

But what do we say?

Ella had her very first dentist appointment and not surprisingly, the first thing they noticed was that she is a thumb sucker.

“What have you tried to do to stop her thumb sucking?” they asked (or maybe a better word would be drilled.) I felt mildly defensive, especially since they’d just seen Carson and were so perplexed that a four-year-old was so afraid of the dentist. How odd, indeed!

“Well, I, uh, well…I haven’t really tried anything. I mean, I know she needs to stop and that it’s affecting her teeth, but she’s not even three. I don’t think she really understands,” I managed to say.

Separately the hygienist and the dentist told me some ways I could encourage Ella to give up the thumb, so lucky for me I got to hear their suggestions twice. Maybe they thought if they both told me, I’d be twice as likely to follow through?

Thumb guards, tape, some paint-on stuff for her thumb that tastes gross, and putting Tabasco Sauce on her thumb were all suggested. “Really??,” I wanted to say. “REALLY? You think it’s okay to put TABASCO SAUCE on a not even three-year-old’s thumb??”

It doesn’t sound like it, but I do really like this dentist and his staff. They are kind and patient, the exam area is bright and kid friendly. I just had a hard to time heeding their suggestions once they mentioned Tabasco, because I just think that’s so mean. Before I had kids, I internally gasped at children who sucked their thumbs and used pacifiers. “Terrible parenting,” I’d grumble to myself, conveniently forgetting that I sucked my thumb until I was eight and have great parents. I probably wouldn’t have bristled at the suggestion of Tabasco to extinguish the evil known as thumb sucking before it was suggested for my sweet, darling girl.

I imagine Ella’s future will include many hours spent in the orthodontist’s chair, tears will be shed over the pain of braces. Tate and I have quietly discussed how expensive her teeth will mostly likely be. As a former Speech-Language Pathologist, I know that sometimes thumb sucking can be detrimental to speech sound development. WE KNOW! Her teeth are messed up! It’s because she sucks her thumb! We know she needs to stop!

So far, Ella’s speech is perfectly fine. She has a few errors, but they are age-appropriate. Also? She’s NOT EVEN THREE. It’s hard for me to get myself too worked up about changing her thumb sucking behavior when I know that she’ll eventually give it up without me slathering her thumb in Tabasco and burning her mouth.

We return to the dentist in six months and he will be expecting that we’ve actually done something about Ella’s thumb sucking. No, we won’t be going the Tabasco route (we’ll wait until she’s at least 3 1/2 for that. Ha!). Tate suggested a lobotomy for Ella since they have such a proven track record, or just removing her thumb all together. (Ha, ha, very funny.)

I’m not so sure that we’ll be doing anything drastic to encourage her to stop, aside from talking about how “big, three-year-old girls don’t suck their thumbs!”

I know you can’t see it very well, but do you like my purple shirt? I got it because it makes me think of Maddie.

What about the glasses on my head? It’s a bad picture of my glasses, but they are aviator sunglasses. OHMommy told me they were all the rage this season and I tend to listen to her when it comes to matters of fashion. Tate calls me Poncherello whenever I wear them, but WHATEVER, I look totally cool AND I get to pretend I’m an honorary CHiP.  OHMommy also said that she’d be wearing more earrings to show off her cute new haircut and since _I_ have a cute new haircut, I’m following her lead on the earrings.  Pretty sassy, huh!?

Oh and I’m having a little issue with GIGANTIC ZITS INVADING MY FACE.  You probably didn’t even notice, but I figured I better say something lest you think I had some sort of tumor or alien growing on my cheek.  All I can say is, thank goodness for concealer. Too bad my Ponchorello sunglasses don’t cover it up.

I suppose only hunters and spouses of hunters can truly appreciate giving a loved one fox urine for Christmas.

This gift made Tate disturbingly excited.  Apparently it’s very difficult to find and “thanks” to his mom and dad’s Christmas shopping diligence, he now is the proud owner of fox urine.

So I guess in this case it’s appropriate to say, “Merry Pissmas?”

If you’re getting desperate and need to buy some super fab gifts for the hunter in your life (and they’re already lucky enough to own their own bottled fox pee), do I have some ideas for you!

Hoo-ahhs and Monkey Butt Powder, or The Butt-Out Tool.

(You can thank me later. *wink*)

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Shop now!

Get yer fox urine right here! (Not SO hard to find…)

Nothing says I love you like a good wipe. Buy them Hoo-Ahhs!

Anti Monkey Butt Powder, for those loved ones with itchy, monkey-like asses!

Buy the much coveted Butt-Out tool here!

Full disclosure…these wonderful products are linked via my Amazon affiliate account.  If I sell enough of these fabulous treasures, I’ll have enough money in six or seven years to buy a can of pinto beans.  Thank you!

My children each received these Zhu Zhu pets as an early Christmas present from their great aunt and uncle.

Surely I’m missing something here?  The most coveted toy of the Christmas season is a fake robot hamster that moos like a cow and can sound like a car horn, amongst many other non-hamster-like sounds…um, why?

I’ve been a daredevil parent since the beginning.  Soon after Carson was born and back when I still read Parents Magazine, I read that one of his toys had been recalled because the wheels on one of his plush car toys could come off and choke an unsuspecting infant.

You know what I did?  Not a darn thing.  I didn’t even take the death trap toy away from Carson.  He continued to gnaw and gnaw on that toy, defying the odds stacked against him and that toy.  I really enjoyed the added rush of excitement that lingered whenever he played with the toy.

There was also this one time (okay, about twenty times) that I put Carson in his Bumbo seat and placed him high atop a bookshelf while I went out for the afternoon with some girlfriends.  Danger, schmanger.  I figured he was safer up there than on the ground, prey to the dogs.  He was perfectly fine when I returned a few hours later and didn’t even fall out until I got home!

Once when Ella was a baby, I let her ride in her carseat on top of the roof of my car, just to let her get some fresh air.  We rode around, I took her out on the highway to pick up some speed and really let her feel the wind in her wisps of hair.  The only truly dangerous thing I did was not putting socks on her wee little baby feet.  Poor girl was freezing when I retrieved her.  I’m lucky she didn’t catch a cold.

At the beginning of the summer, I signed both kids up for knife juggling.  They didn’t really show any real talent for the sport and weren’t making any progress so I cancelled the lessons.  They started practicing on their own and really started to show improvement.  Nothing like getting sliced a few times to really teach them!

This pattern of dangerous parenting has continued.  Why, just yesterday at Target, an employee stopped us to reprimand me for allowing Carson to ride standing up on the back of the cart.  She warned me that children END UP IN THE HOSPITAL by such careless acts by parents.

It’s a good thing she taught me something about safety and parenting.   I think I really have a lot to learn.

(Portions of this post were either fabricated and/or greatly exaggerated. The part about Target? 100% true.)