I like to play favorites with my kids. I like to say things like ‘You’re my favorite oldest son.’ ‘You’re my favorite daughter.’ ‘You’re my favorite kid in this room right now.’ Or, more simply, ‘you are my favorite kid named insert child’s name here‘. Eventually Freckles got wise. He started to say ‘But I’m you’re ONLY one!’. Which I could have laughed at and left. Because how terrible would it be if we then told him that actually we had at least half a dozen test Freckle’s before him who live under the stairs because they didn’t meet standard? I mean, a good parent wouldn’t tease their child that if they keep annoying them they’ll just put him with the ‘other Frecke’s’ and try again. So obviously, that has never happened….. …… When Freckles was born, he had a slight disadvantage from the other kids. I was his mom. And I had never held a baby before. I had never fed a baby. Never changed a baby. Never cuddled or comforted or spent even 1 minute trying to convince a baby to stop crying. I had absolutely no idea what I was doing. After Freckles was born I made DH show me how to change a diaper quickly while the nurses were out of the room so they wouldn’t think I was incompetent. My inexperience didn’t stop me in any way from judging other parents, mind you. Oh, I judged. And when I saw those posters advocating against shaking your baby, I thought ‘…
When going through the MOUNDS of paper my son brought home from school from this year, I found this. It’s priceless. And it made me think what he thinks my husband does all day at work! Now I am not a keeper of stuff. I keep a few things each year per kid. I’m not going to keep it all. What will he do with boxes of old colouring pages and math equations? But this, this is a keeper. What I want to be when I Grow Up When I grow up I want to be in the army. I want to be in the military because my dad is in the military. I also want to blow stuff up so I can keep our country free. I will train hard to rank up. I will listen to my boss, do parades and shoot from a tank. I will be still at attention. I will have to know to be sneaky. I will have to listen to commands to know what to do. I’ll shoot at targets and exercise. When I’m a sargent I will have a stick. I’ll yell at my men. By (Freckles) So this made me want to write a reply. One I will keep with it. And if in fact this is the choice my son makes when he grows up, I will remind myself the kind of mom I wanted to be when I grew up. Because the older he gets the harder I feel like it will be to do this army thing from the Mom’s perspective, and not the wives. What will happen when I have to let…
