Oh Geez

Dear Ian,

Here we are on your second week of school, and although week one went pretty well, this week has been more of a challenge.  The honeymoon is definitely over; and by this I mean, you are no longer impressed with the bright colors, fun new toys and other kids.  You want Mommy.  Or Daddy.  And lately, since she picked you up from school for lunch the other day, Grandma Davis.  I feel like the worst mother in the world as I hand you over to your teachers while you cry like your heart is breaking.  I know it is just a phase, and pretty soon we will have to bodily remove you from your classroom, but I can't help feeling, as you sob when I leave, that this will be one of those things you tell your therapist one day.

Here is a list of things that I fear you will tell someone while lying on a couch...

1.  Mommy and Daddy occasionally let you take "Redneck Baths."  These "baths" are those times when let you play in the pool or in the sprinkler and then dress you in jammies or any other thing that the moment calls for without actually cleaning you.  In our defense, you aren't really that dirty, so why not just let you rinse and wear?  Save some water, save the planet, save our sanity.  Don't judge, Son, because one day it could be you saying to your kid, "Meh, don't worry about it.  You can get really clean tomorrow once you're really dirty."

2.  Mommy made you cut two molars with no pain medications.  This I actually feel really bad about.   I honestly had no idea you were cutting teeth; I just thought you were being a grump, since we are at the advent of your "terrible twos."

3.  We sometimes skip "healthy snack" and consider eating the free cookie at the grocery store our afternoon snack for the day.  Hey, Mommy has shopping to do, and you can be the slowest eater in the world.  So why not kill two birds with one stone?  And I have peeled a banana for you to eat in the shopping cart a time or two.  It's not ALWAYS unhealthy.

4.  To make a point, I stepped on your toes.  Wow.  Written out, that looks terrible.  Well, it was for your own good.  You see, you had this habit of running down our driveway and into the cul-de-sac.  Not safe.  So I told you that if you are on the road, cars can squish your toes.  And to make sure you understood how that would feel, I stepped on your foot.  Not hard!  Just enough for you to feel it and notice that you didn't like it much.  You now stop on a dime at the end of the drive way.  Let's just say that you are a tactile learner, and this is how you understood my message and leave it at that.  

I'm sure there's more, and with all this time we have together, I'm sure I'll end up creating new things to add to this list.  A Mommy's job is fraught with mess ups and do-overs.  You little people don't exactly come with a manual, or an off-switch for that matter, so us grown-ups just do our best to keep you alive and survive ourselves.  If we end up warping you, well...

Hang in there, little son.  Mommy is feeling her way around this whole parenting thing, so it's "good luck" to both of us.  When you're a little more grown up, we can have a competition to see who got messed up the most during your childhood.  Right now, I think I'd win.

Love you anyway,
Mommy