Babies Drool & Big Kids Rule

Nothing will make you want another baby faster than seeing picture of cute, sleeping bundles of joy on Facebook, which brings me to my message of thanks today.

Today, I am thankful for Newton’s law of motion. You know the one…for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction? Yep, I’m thankful for that.

But after admiring all of those sleeping, cutie-patootie little babies on Facebook, there comes a time when you get off of Facebook to bask in the ambience of your own children. Insert Mr. Figgy Pants.

It’s easy to say you want another kid when you look at a still, silent photo of Old Blue Eyes’s mini-me. But that idea’s about as valid as Obama’s birth certificate. They don’t sit still, and their first breath of air is a gasp for the run-on sentence that lasts until they’re a teenager.

When reality bites you right in your Irish arse, you pull your hair out...and then you realize they’re so much more fun than babies!

Here are the top 5 reasons big kids are more awesome than babies:

5.  If all of their clothes are smushed under their bed and you make them wear their only clean clothes, which happen to be orange britches and a red and blue plaid shirt, you can shrug it off by saying “I let them pick out their own clothes today.”

4. They’re potty trained. And by potty trained, I mean that they know where the john is, but not necessarily how to hit the bulls eye.

3. When you go on a day trip, you take your family members, a few bottles of water, and you’re off. When we lived in Florida, every trip home had us pricing out retired short buses. The play pen, the stroller, the car seat, the nebulizer, 12 OTC cold medicines, Orajel, 500 diapers, 2 tubs of wipes, the remains of the first family pet, a puke bucket, Kleenex, a pterodactyl, and a therapist on speed dial.

2. I don’t know why this one shocks me, but it still does:  kids are constantly becoming their own person! This is the best, and most infuriating, part of parenting. No matter how much you brainwash them to be just like you, they’re not. They are grown up McNuggets, and that’s awesome.  

1. They’ll teach you how to love…and laugh…and get Sharpie off of genuine ostrich leather. I’ve seen people say that they love their pets like children:  they’re wrong. If they had children, they’d know there is no comparison between a fur baby you pick up at the pound and the wriggling bone bag that has committed unpardonable crimes against anatomy. And you know what? They’re worth every sag, bag and wrinkle.

Yesterday morning, I dropped the kids off at school, and had just gotten back in the house to start my day. 

At 8:27, my phone rings.

Phone calls before 8:30 are never a good thing. Everybody that knows me knows I haven’t had time to fix my coffee by then, so you’d better proceed with caution.

“Hello?”

“Hi, Mrs. Cox. This is Lisa at (the pre-school), and we have an emergency.”

An emergency? In 27 minutes?! Wow, she's getting faster!

“Emma just threw up in the classroom.”

Phew. Okay, puking got bumped off of the emergency list when Bubby blew up the patio table and nearly killed us all. An emergency is losing one of my children. An emergency is accidentally rolling their fingers up in the car window. (Still feel bad about that one.) An emergency is the school house being on fire (which you can NOT pin on me because I wasn’t there.) But puking? No….where….near emergency status.

“Did she throw up on herself?”

The lady paused like I’d just asked her what size britches she wears.

“Um, no, she threw up in the floor.”

That wasn’t a crazy question, was it? If she did, I needed to bring her a change of clothes for the ride home. 

If not, I’d be there in a minute.

I went and picked her up, brought her home, and stuck her back in her nightgown. She’s laying on the couch when she takes off like Flo Jo for the bathroom. I couldn’t help but find comfort in the fact that were she still a baby, I’d be swimming in hot cottage cheese right about now. I hate it that she’s sick, but it is SO much easier to deal with once they can walk and talk.

Rae-Rae has always been a fun child, and since he’s turning out just as cracked as I am, we have fun together. At his last parent-teacher conference, the only thing negative his teacher said is that he needed to get organized and clean up the mess that knocked Katrina off the top of the natural disaster chart. I know he’s messy, but I’m not really concerned. He gets it from me.

I thought he was doing better, until she sent a note home that said he owed $15 to the library for a book he lost….in AUGUST. Lo and behold, this week, Jesus Christ descended from heaven and returned this little gem to his possession. Yep…it had been in his desk….since AUGUST.

He sits by a kid named Mohammed, who is (duh) Middle Eastern. They’ve been in the same class since we

moved here last year, and Rae-Rae can’t stand this kid. He looks and sounds like Steve Urkel, so I can’t say as I blame him.

Tuesday, Rae-Rae comes home and says they all cleaned out their desks. He looks at me with shocked expression, and says “Mom, it was like Hoarders, Buried Alive:  Arabic Disaster.”

But that wore off…yesterday morning, when I dropped him off, I waved and said “I love you”, like I always do, to which he mumbles “I love you, too, but I don’t like you.”  SCORE ONE FOR MOM! I must’ve done something right! I apparently channeled my inner Nero by refusing to take him back home to get the notebook that I told him to put in his backpack the night before.

I guess number one on the list should’ve been that they tell you how much you don’t know.

In closing, a deep thought for the day:

If a mother is on a deserted island by herself, is she still wrong about everything?

Be blessed, y’all.