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We couldn’t be more well behaved. Your blog is an insult!
On Day 117 in captivity I find myself a bit retrospective regarding my diary as a hostage. Looking back, I’ve been doing a lot of complaining. My lamentations while clearly hysterical may give the appearance that I am in some way unhappy as a hostage parent. While I do have moments of complete mental deterioration those moments pale in comparison to the feeling I get when my hostage takers laugh or smile at me. The feeling I get when Madge melts into my chest as she falls asleep or the unmatched joy that overtakes me when the Bird looks up at me a squeaks happily before I take him out of his crib. I think the point of this ongoing account of what I refer to as a life in captivity is to be open about how I am not a perfect parent, I don’t have all the answers and raising kids at any age is enough to strip a person of all reason and sense. Tonight while trying to burp Madge to avoid an avalanche of spit-up a minute after we try to put her down for the night, she decided she wasn’t in a compliant type of mood and therefore stiffened up her body straight as a board every time I tried to lean her forward to pat on her back to solicit said belch. While she was stiffening up and crying as I tried to coax her in to leaning forward I stopped for a moment and thought, “this is just sick, why will she not let me burp her as I am clearly only trying to help.” I then thought, “She’s four months old you schmuck, this is what they do.” Although the logic was there, I still found myself frustrated repeatedly and reminding myself repeatedly that I should probably have slightly more patience at my disposal than my four month old Madge does. I guess it’s only natural to let these things get to you as a new parent. I’m hoping it’s only natural. I never imagine my mother, who in my eyes is the expert on all things parenting, ever got frustrated with the things I did to her as an infant and child. Then I remember the story she tells from time to time about how my favorite thing to do to her as a four year old was to hide in the clothes racks at the department stores when she took me shopping with her. Those clothes racks at the time were large circular metal racks with a sort of platform a foot above the ground in the middle of the rack. That platform was just high enough for me to figure out that if I lifted my feet up while hanging from the rack, I was invisible to my mother or anyone who might be trying to find me. After screaming my name in the store, and me not answering and giggling silently to myself at my victory in sneakiness, another woman taps my mother on the shoulder and tells her a little boy is hiding in a clothes rack just a few feet away. My mother distraught and near tears hugs me and warns me not to do it again. Then as we approach the door to the store, her tone changes slightly and the warning turns to a very real threat of “wait until I get you home.” I don’t remember any of the incident myself, but my mother swears to this day that actually killing me was a very real solution for her at the time. Stories like that where my mother, a childcare expert and authority on all things child related let little old innocent me bring her to a homicidal fever help me feel better about freaking out a little in my head when my little terrorists are non-compliant. So, I will continue to complain to the world, hopefully in a funny way that some of you can relate to. At the same time, I will try to remind myself that part of a child’s job is to make their parents age just a little faster than they did before the kids came and to just appreciate the awesome thing it is to have them around in the first place. As long as Madge and Bird continue to express their dissatisfaction with the service at this establishment, I’ll probably end up appreciating Madge and the Bird a lot more during nap time than feeding time. Hey, it’s a start.
Image may be NSFW.
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Image may be NSFW.Clik here to view.
