The Poor Oldest Kids

One thing I know for certain is that when our two oldest kids were little, we didn't know anything.  Sometimes I think back on the things we did out of ignorance and want to smack both myself and Dear Hubby.  And sometimes, though, I want to say, "Awwww, that's so adorable." 

For instance, we did not know that people who are eighteen months old are not capable of standing in the corner for more than a minute.  (That would be one of the smacking times.)  Sometimes we sided with the babysitter and reprimanded our children for dumb little kid stuff they did at her house--dancing in the toilet, refusing to eat a ham sandwich and then spewing it across the table when forced to eat it, staring at her when she ate doughnuts in front of them.  We kept them too squeaky clean, dressed them too nicely, insisted they empty their plates, and had way too many rules.  (Sorry, my dear oldest loves.)  We used everybody else's outsides as the standard to assess our insides.  We didn't know that it would be okay if they forgot to brush their teeth for a whole minute before school, or that it's just fine to let them pick out their own outfits even if they don't match and they're going to church. They did not arrive with a manual, and as implied in an earlier post, everybody knew best how we should raise our kids.  The problems with that thinking were two-fold:  1.  They weren't their kids; and 2.  The everybodies' advice all conflicted with each other.  We tried to please so many people that we lost sight of the real reason people have children:   to cherish them.  We got better as time wore on, and we all learned together about being a family, but the going was really tough at first.

Then, there were the adorable things we did as parents, and things we were told to do but thought better of, even in the throes of ignorance.  I thought one of the children had windburn for six months; it was ringworm.  Speaking of worms, someone told us the best way to see if your children had worms--because we all know you get them from having dirty fingernails--was to put a piece of masking tape from one hiney cheek to another while they slept in a dark room, wait an hour and then check with a flashlight to see if any worms were stuck to the tape.  The theory is that if it's dark, the worms think it's safe to pop their heads out and peek.  BOOM!  They get stuck on the tape and the next day the doctor administers worm medicine.  People do this--no lie.  Once, at South of the Border, we chuckled smugly at the parents of the little boy who was under the table screaming and kicking them in the shins.  Our children would never do anything like that--and they didn't THAT DAY.

But we live!  We learn!  We love!  We loosen up!  And then we become grandparents!