Why children aren't born full sized...or able to speak.

God knew.

If our children came out of us semi-full sized, with fully functional hands, feet and mouth, Eve would have killed off the human race right after she produced Cain.

If she didn't actually resort to murder...there would have been but one child. One child capable of destroying the Garden of Eden in one fell swoop, all while mouthing off and knowing better than the first mom.

Certainly NO ONE would consciously reproduce again and again, having met the stage that comes between toddler and teen angst. I'm also fairly certain that it requires a certain degree of naivete to reproduce a third time having already seen what preschool looks like.

 And yet, here I sit. Several children crawling all over me...looking forward to the year when ALL THREE of them know better than I do, and can give me the basic plot of a forty minute movie in no less than an hour and a half. That can bring up both constipation and diarrhea in the same sentence, and at the dinner table, all while topping it off with a general discussion of eating disorders. Nothing like the talk of bulimia to stimulate your appetite...
 
Or maybe I should be thanking my child for thoughtfully ruining my appetite after spending no less than ten minutes arguing about what I was cooking for dinner.

 I think I know what's in the saute pan. Evidently she knows better. This conversation has a predictable end...I get irritated and she gets upset.

*BIG DEEP SIGH.

She's on her way out the door. Tall, well dressed, fashionable....completely and totally outspoken...so far from the baby who used to sit and stare me down. I will miss her the moment she walks out the door, but this minute...and the fiftieth diarrhea joke...I'm ready to pull my hair out.
 

Some days I just suck at parenting.

It's a fact.

My children are small tropical storms on a good day.

On a bad day, well, let's just say I'm only half joking when I say we should have named the middle one Katrina. She can reek havoc on a room in three seconds flat...and she's just so freaking cute while doing it. It's maddening. Invite her over to your house, and you will still be finding things where they don't belong several YEARS later.

I wouldn't change a thing.

The only problem comes with balancing two handful-ish children with keeping a home that doesn't get nominated for Hoarders.

It's not easy.  I can clean, not paying attention to my children, only to find that they've emptied both toy boxes, the book shelves, and rearranged the furniture while I washed three dishes.

 I can set them up at the table with a project, which will result in walls that need to be cleaned since there is no way for me to wash dishes while watching them, since I was born without the proverbial eyes in the back of my head.

So today, faced with the prospect of looking at this mess for another day after spending almost a whole day yesterday without the benefit of power, heat or hot water, I broke all my parenting rules. I'm guessing this will be the day that begins their need for therapy, and I'm not entirely sure I care.

A list of rules I've broken today:
1) I made two separate lunches. Two. Separate. Lunches. I don't do this, because, well, I'm not a short order cook. But today, I went to the fridge, dug out what each child would like best, and put it in front of them. So, Alicia went a whole meal subbing the vegetable course for the more popular chocolate course.  She's going to Grandma's tonight, they will have plenty of vegetables. Plus, I'm out of raw carrots.

 2) I then put their plates in front of them and left the table. This is a much bigger rule in this house. We eat together. Today, I palmed a chicken sandwich on a commercial (blech!!!) hot dog bun and left the table. Popping my head in every three seconds and cleaning without the benefit of music to listen for any sounds. The girls, very happy to be left to their own devices, ate happily as I ran up and down the stairs rotating laundry and sweeping the steps.

3) I used the TV as a baby sitter. Well, as much as I could. My kids don't really "watch" TV. So this bought me exactly enough time to vacuum the steps. Which, I'm fine with, of course. I just needed to get it done before I fight them into their respective beds.

4) I forced the middle child into slave labor. As of right now, she's fed the dog and thrown her shoes from the living room. Hey, I'll take what I can get.

So, now that I've both neglected and abused my children for at least a half an hour according to some parenting standards, my house still isn't clean, and I have guilt.  I'm also at a loss as to what parenting rules I can break that will let me clean my kitchen and get ready for work. Oh, well, I'll figure something out. Right now, the baby is unloading the book shelf I just put back together, so, off I go.

At one point do the people who are "protecting us" actually become perpetrators?

Terrorists fly.

This is a true statement.

Terrorists kill their own children to promote their political agenda.

 This is also a true statement.

 At what point, though, have the people who are sworn to protect us become actual abusers themselves?




Watch this video. If it doesn't break your heart to see the young child screaming, "don't touch me!" over and over, as the TSA agent brusquely ignores her pleas and continues to grope her, well, I don't know what to tell you.

They started the search by taking a teddy bear away from a tired child. I'm at a loss to figure out why the teddy bear couldn't ride in his mommy's arms through the metal detector in the first place. She was SO upset at the separation, she couldn't keep still for the scanner, which prompted a pat down from someone with the child relation skills of Count Olaf. (MissPreteen is reading Lemony Snickett right now).

The strange man has his hands ALL OVER the child. Completely ignoring her protests and cries. Doesn't break to let her calm down. Doesn't stop. Finishes his business completely ignoring the fact that she clearly feels violated.

The father films the scene, and the mother holds the little girl, allowing the TSA agent to continue. No one stands up and says..."stop touching my kid." "Let's find another way to do this." "Is there anything else we can do to prove this little girl is safe?

 I mean, it's pretty clear she's hiding a bomb in her t-shirt and leggings.

 So the real question is, why are we allowing a government agency to molest our children?

 That dad had some rights he didn't invoke. Someone should have stood up for that little girl. And the fact that the TSA agent still has a job after forcibly groping a child with no respect for her pleas is utterly amazing.

I'm still sitting here shaking my head... at a loss to figure out how this keeps us safe.

If anything, it makes us victims.

Another reason not to buy Toyota.

Not sure which is worse... the idea that a spoiled, snot nosed little brat (albeit a cute one) could bully their parents into buying a car that's more socially respectable in their eyes, or the fact that a car company actually believes this shit will sell cars.

Here's a news flash, Toyota: obviously the kid's parents are more concerned about stopping (and having their brakes work) than they are about buying into your poorly written piece of crap commercial.

What are we teaching our children?

The President of the United States gave a speech this week. A speech about bullying. He's very sensitive, this President, to small issues that plague the country. It was a nice speech, and I liked the part where he said, "It gets better."

 It was well said. It DOES get better. As a former victim of bullying, I can say that with the utmost assurance. One day, you wake up, an adult, not really ready to face the world, and you learn to tease back. I have to say, with all my challenges, killing myself never really crossed my mind. I will not pretend to know the heartache that these kids went through in their final hours, because my bullying had an off switch.

 I went home. Yes, in some cases, that was a technicolor land of badness, but there was no internet, no cell phones, no instant messaging, one phone in the middle of the house that I wasn't really allowed to use. I was allowed one television show a day, and that was, drum roll please, the Patty Duke show. In other words, my house was like a fortress against all things school. No bullies got in, (thank goodness, because one of them was a teacher) and I had sixteen hours a day to regroup. (and often, in my young mind, to plan the social demise of whatever evil monster child had tormented me earlier in the day.)

 There were no Hannah Montanahs, no iCarlys, no Sonny with a Chances. Lyndsey Lohan wasn't a victim of Mean Girls yet.

 Fast forward twenty years, and chances are, your child's favorite character,  no matter the age group, is a sarcastic little brat. Delivered in a light and joking manner, and followed up by the requisite happy ending, the characters often show little in the way of hurt feelings. It's not in the the script. No one would watch a sitcom where the odd man out attempted suicide. If Disney aired it, parents would be screaming and it would be blogged about  by Moms from here to China. No one thinks twice about a pop princess who mouths off to her Daddy, treats her best friend like so much trash, and at the end of the story, faces no consequences.

Life doesn't follow a script, and kids don't have screen writers making sure that they don't cross the parent friendly line. They lack the filter that says...this is too much. I'm literally crushing this person's spirit. No, William Golding had it right. Children can have a really mean spirit about them, especially in a group. Left alone, they will murder the weak.

Maybe we shouldn't let them spend an hour or so a day watching people treat each other like dirt.

If you think, just for one minute, that these things haven't played a part, that life isn't exaggerating art, let me ask you this. Who picks the clothes your child is wearing? What show are they on?

Maybe we should keep the computers, and the cell phones, and all the technology where we can see it. In the living room, where we can see by the looks on our children's faces whether or not some little jerk is invading our fortress via instant messenger.

Maybe we should stop being cool long enough to be parents.