No fathers or mothers think their own children ugly.
~ Miguel de Cervantes
I so often read blogs that are written by mothers, talking about their kids and how they view parenthood. They run the gamut from funny to depressing to obnoxious and everywhere in between. There are a lot of opinions, stories, pictures and notions out there in the blog world...and while I often smile and nod to myself, thinking "Yep. Mmm hmmm. Been there.", I sometimes have to refrain from getting justifiably angry at a complete and total stranger for the ludicrous and downright dumbass shit people say and do.
Of course, everyone thinks that their child is the smartest/cutest/funniest/BEST. That is one of the major rules of parenting, right up there with "don't let them chew on cords" and "keep them alive". You have to stare adoringly at them, with a big dopey smile on your face, even when everyone else in the room is ready to climb the walls, smack you (or, let's be honest, your child) and get the hell away from both of you. Blogs written by mothers are the electronic equivalent of that big dopey smile.
If Merrill were to write a blog entry, it would probably look something like this:
"This morning, I woke up to a dark room, only illuminated by a night light. Not caring that it was not yet light out, I yelled out for my mom to come rescue me from the dreaded shadows (shadows!!) softly hitting the walls from said night light. She didn't come immediately. In fact, she actually let me call her name three consecutive times - yes, THREE - before she entered my room to greet me. She looked sleepy, and she was only half smiling when she hugged me good morning. Not impressed.
I gave her the grand gesture of giving her 95 seconds before asking for cartoons and breakfast. How amazing am I?? And when I requested cashews, ice cream and chips for breakfast...you would have thought I wanted her to whip up something ridiculous in the amount of time it took her to say "yeah right". Seriously...what is this?
Some days I just don't understand her. She acts like I'm so unreasonable sometimes. Ok, sure...I am pretty demanding, and I don't really listen to anything she says, and I repeat myself a LOT. But I'm cute. I'm the cutest kid in the world, and the funniest, and definitely the smartest. My dad said so. So why can't that be enough?
Just yesterday, for instance. You won't believe this. She was trying to play a game with me, and....oh, you know what sounds good? Cheetos. And oreos. In a bowl. No, not THAT bowl. The OTHER blue bowl. Wait. Where was I? Oh, right. The game. So we are playing the game, and I saw a commercial on, and it had the coolest most best thing on it. I didn't know what it was, but I had to talk about it for 45 minutes. And after about 30 minutes of talking about it, during which time I forgot what we were talking about 6 times and had to be reminded, she didn't seem nearly as interested as I thought she should be.
But my mom is the best. She is the best at cutting sandwiches, and at washing hair, and she is really really smart, smarter than ALL the other moms (although sometimes I secretly think she's making up answers when I ask questions that don't really make sense just to test her). All the other kids at school think that they have the best mom, and they gaze adoringly at their moms when it's time to be picked up. They have no idea that mine really is the best. No clue. Suckers."
