Parenthood is an amazing thing. There are so many precious moments that I've had sprinkled throughout my days that I cannot imagine what my life would be like without my beautiful little girl. That being said, I hate children. I don't hate them ALL, and I don't hate them ALL the time. Just most of them, most of the time.
Before I had a child, I thought that my dislike of them was merely the result of a lack of knowledge about how to deal with them. I assumed that once I had one, I would love them all. Boy was I wrong!!
I recently volunteered to chaperone a field trip to the zoo with my daughter's first grade class. I knew when I agreed to go that it was probably not going to be the most enjoyable day I've ever had but I figured that it couldn't be too traumatic. After all, there were going to be at least 4 other adults there to help corral the 18 children that went. Again, I was wrong.
From the moment the children were grouped up with the adults, I found myself fighting the urge to hang myself with their backpacks. They chatter non stop (nothing they said came even close to being intelligable), they only have one volume (extremely loud) and their voices are ALL incredibly high pitched. I'm certain that confining all that noise within one tiny bus did wonders for the stock price of Tylenol. Adding to the noise level from my own child's class was yet another class of first graders, crammed into the same bus, with parent chaperones that looked just as miserable as I was. The noise level was no where near the worst part though.
After we endured 3 hours of chasing the children around the zoo, resisting the urge to toss them into the cages with the animals, fighting the feeling that maybe WE would be better off in the cages with the animals and questioning the decision to remove corporal punishment from schools, we had to load them all onto the bus for the ride home.
As traumatic as the ride TO the zoo was, the ride home took it to a whole new level of horror. This time, we didn't just have the excited noise level to push us to the brink of insanity, we also had the smell. I don't know if that odor was present on the ride home, if it was triggered at the zoo or if the stench of the zoo simply cleared my sinuses enough for me to notice it but the only word that could describe that smell was REVOLTING.
Children always seem to have a slight aroma to them. Little boys more so than little girls, but it doesn't seem to pass over any child. I always attributed this to the fact that they have such tiny bodies that the odors that accumlate on a daily basis simply have no where to go. After the zoo, I'm beginning to rethink that theory and revise it into one that just states that kids stink solely because they are kids!!
As the trip drew to a close and I plotted the fastest route off that bus and back to the safety of my child free car, I vowed to myself that I would NEVER go on another field trip like that again. Jadyn seems to have other plans though.....she came home from school, crawled into my lap, laid her head on my shoulder, looked into my eyes and said "Momma, thanks for coming with me today. I must be the most special little girl in the whole world!!".....and just like that, I volunteered for the field trip the next day.
I still don't like children and I'm beginning to doubt that I will ever learn to like them. However, regardless of my apparent allergy to that smelly, loud, disrespectful classification of humans known as children, as long as I am rewarded for my torment with words of adoration from my daughter, I suppose I will continue to subject myself to close encounters with those darling little angels for a few more years.
Wednesday, May 18, 2011
Saturday, May 7, 2011
Momma
When I was a kid, the thought of being anything like my mom was absolutely horrifying (don't judge me, you thought the same thing), and when I became a mother, I vowed that I would do things differently. After all, no mother who loved their child would actually spank them right? They wouldn't force them to eat everything on their plate because, let's face it, brussel sprouts are just plain nasty! I was certain that I had everything figured out and that I knew everything there was to know about how to raise a kid. Boy was I wrong!
It wasn't long after I had my own daughter that I began to learn just how incredibly wrong I was. For all of my promises to myself that I would not turn into my mother, I seem to hear her voice coming out of my mouth on an all too regular basis lately. Suddenly, I find myself understanding that she was actually telling me the truth when she said, "I'm spanking you because I love you. It hurts me too." And the "starving Eithiopian kids" tactic to get me to eat my dinner? She was telling the truth about that too! The very methods of punishment that my mother used to dicipline me, while they seemed cruel and borderline abusive at the time, suddenly make a great deal of sense to me. More and more, I hear people that know both my mother and myself telling me how much I look and act like her, and more and more I realize thatI am completely ok with that.
You see, not only is my mother an exceptionally beautiful woman (don't be mad...we've just got good genes), she is also an incredibly smart woman (and I'm not just talking about book smarts), a talented woman (I've never seen a woman juggle as many responsiblities as my Momma) and most importantly, she is a Godly woman. So if someone looks at me and my life, and sees any sort of reflection of my mother in it....then I believe I'll take that as a pretty amazing compliment. If I can handle life's troubles and stress with even a fraction of the grace that I've seen my mother handle them, then I would consider myself a success. If I raise my children exactly the same way that my mother raised me, and they feel the same way about me that I feel about my mother, well, that's even better. Because someday, my baby girl is going to grow up, and she will leave my side (hopefully not to go halfway around the world like I did), and I will have to let her go. My job will be done and the only thing left for me to do will be to pray that I did enough while she was with me.
When the day comes that I have to step back and look at the woman I raised, my one wish is that I managed to become my mother enough that my daughter will someday become me.
It wasn't long after I had my own daughter that I began to learn just how incredibly wrong I was. For all of my promises to myself that I would not turn into my mother, I seem to hear her voice coming out of my mouth on an all too regular basis lately. Suddenly, I find myself understanding that she was actually telling me the truth when she said, "I'm spanking you because I love you. It hurts me too." And the "starving Eithiopian kids" tactic to get me to eat my dinner? She was telling the truth about that too! The very methods of punishment that my mother used to dicipline me, while they seemed cruel and borderline abusive at the time, suddenly make a great deal of sense to me. More and more, I hear people that know both my mother and myself telling me how much I look and act like her, and more and more I realize thatI am completely ok with that.
You see, not only is my mother an exceptionally beautiful woman (don't be mad...we've just got good genes), she is also an incredibly smart woman (and I'm not just talking about book smarts), a talented woman (I've never seen a woman juggle as many responsiblities as my Momma) and most importantly, she is a Godly woman. So if someone looks at me and my life, and sees any sort of reflection of my mother in it....then I believe I'll take that as a pretty amazing compliment. If I can handle life's troubles and stress with even a fraction of the grace that I've seen my mother handle them, then I would consider myself a success. If I raise my children exactly the same way that my mother raised me, and they feel the same way about me that I feel about my mother, well, that's even better. Because someday, my baby girl is going to grow up, and she will leave my side (hopefully not to go halfway around the world like I did), and I will have to let her go. My job will be done and the only thing left for me to do will be to pray that I did enough while she was with me.
When the day comes that I have to step back and look at the woman I raised, my one wish is that I managed to become my mother enough that my daughter will someday become me.
Tuesday, May 3, 2011
yeah, I'm going there....
I don't normally do this but.....
Politicians lie. They have always lied, and they will always continue to lie. They can't really be blamed....after all, in order to make at least 50% of a country like America like you enough to vote for you, you really have no choice but to lie. Therefore, it seems like fairly solid logic to assume that when elections are drawing near, or it is almost time to start reelection campaigns, the number of lies that our politicians start to spin for our eagerly waiting ears would increase.
This little trick seems to work miracles for people being elected or reelected. The media runs a few stories about how a certain politician "did" something great, or "took a stand" on a subject (whether or not he will ever follow through doesn't really matter). Said politician will give a few really great speeches, (of course, they all pay other people to write their speeches, and so we never actually hear the true words of a politician). The most beautiful part about all these smoke and mirrors? The American people inhale it and beg for more.
We take whatever doctored truth or concocted story the media gives us as gospel truth. We seem to be unable to think for ourselves or do any research to verify the validity of any claims the media makes. We will jump on any bandwagon that comes along, just as long as whatever cause they are advocating is broken down into small enough terms for us to understand without any real mental effort. And as long as there is someone that is willing to sit and patiently spoon feed us their political or religious doctrine with small words and half truths, we will continue to believe and "fight" for that cause.
Once upon a time, this was a country of free thinking people. We were founded because a group of people was tired of being told how to think, how to worship, how to act and how to live their lives. They wanted to be able to have a voice, so they came to a new land and fought to make America a strong, independant nation. I'm pretty sure that every one of our founding fathers would weep to see us now. At some point, we must learn how to think for ourselves again. We have to realize that questioning the decisions of our country's leaders doesn't make us "racist" or a "terrorist". It simply means that we are strong Americans who stand on the same beliefs as our founders did. After all, we are supposed to have a government OF the people, BY the people, and FOR the people......Personally, I think it's high time we took our government back.
Politicians lie. They have always lied, and they will always continue to lie. They can't really be blamed....after all, in order to make at least 50% of a country like America like you enough to vote for you, you really have no choice but to lie. Therefore, it seems like fairly solid logic to assume that when elections are drawing near, or it is almost time to start reelection campaigns, the number of lies that our politicians start to spin for our eagerly waiting ears would increase.
This little trick seems to work miracles for people being elected or reelected. The media runs a few stories about how a certain politician "did" something great, or "took a stand" on a subject (whether or not he will ever follow through doesn't really matter). Said politician will give a few really great speeches, (of course, they all pay other people to write their speeches, and so we never actually hear the true words of a politician). The most beautiful part about all these smoke and mirrors? The American people inhale it and beg for more.
We take whatever doctored truth or concocted story the media gives us as gospel truth. We seem to be unable to think for ourselves or do any research to verify the validity of any claims the media makes. We will jump on any bandwagon that comes along, just as long as whatever cause they are advocating is broken down into small enough terms for us to understand without any real mental effort. And as long as there is someone that is willing to sit and patiently spoon feed us their political or religious doctrine with small words and half truths, we will continue to believe and "fight" for that cause.
Once upon a time, this was a country of free thinking people. We were founded because a group of people was tired of being told how to think, how to worship, how to act and how to live their lives. They wanted to be able to have a voice, so they came to a new land and fought to make America a strong, independant nation. I'm pretty sure that every one of our founding fathers would weep to see us now. At some point, we must learn how to think for ourselves again. We have to realize that questioning the decisions of our country's leaders doesn't make us "racist" or a "terrorist". It simply means that we are strong Americans who stand on the same beliefs as our founders did. After all, we are supposed to have a government OF the people, BY the people, and FOR the people......Personally, I think it's high time we took our government back.
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