Perfect Parents

My husband and I used to be perfect parents….

Then this magical thing happened, we had our first kid. For the first day or two, this new baby was perfection and we were totally going to conquer this parenting gig. The baby smelled good, he was quiet, small, cuddly, and just picture perfect. Then that brand new started to wear off….fast. He no longer smelled sweet and fresh, but had taken on the smell of expired milk and stale French fries left in a hot vehicle. There were so many bodily functions that it seemed like he oozed from absolutely every orifice. Every last one of those oozes was bound to end up on your new clean shirt. Not only did the baby smell of expired milk and stale fries in a hot vehicle, we too reeked of the same odors. He also made noise at all hours of the day and night.

Then that tiny baby grew into a toddler. That was a whole new 7th circle of hell… Not only were the oozing orifices in play, but now he was moving…efficiently. So it was like having a traveling germ machine that had attitude and opinions about everything. He also wasn’t much of a sleeper, which turns out to mean I was not much of a sleeper anymore. He threw tantrums, he smelled, he was so noisy, he was not an immediate expert at potty training, he was like all the other kids I had witnessed and promised we would never have.

About 23 months into this parenting $h!t show we added a baby girl. Surely, by the second one we would have achieved some sort of parenting nirvana, but alas that was not the case. She was just like the first one…except on steroids. More stubborn, more likely to throw a tantrum in public, and even more disgusting than the first.

Now don’t get me wrong, I believe my snowflakes are just as wonderful and special as the next mom. However the realty is, children are weapons of psychological and germ warfare. If as a mother, you have never once thought this, then we can’t be friends. Seriously, I believe hiding in your bathroom at least once is a requirement. But I digress…

We will fast forward a few years to when we added number 5. (For the longest her name on my baby growing app was Holy Crap Number Five.) At this point, I knew exactly what I was getting myself into. I knew we were so far from perfection that that word should no even be allowed in our vocabulary. It was not even a blip on our parenting radar. In fact, I would say our parenting may have gone down a few (a lot of) notches.

We are pretty much a dumpster fire. Our standards for regular bathing is probably below the acceptable social 21st century norms. We are much better than say the common 12th century family. However, baby wipes, swimming in our pool, extended time running in the rain, water balloon fights could possibly have qualified as a bath on occasion.

Our children have the finest hand-me-down wrinkled wardrobe. We are late to nearly everything. The noise level of our home is probably in ear damaging range at times. I count insistently like I am Rainman to make sure that we have not misplaced one of our darlings. My husband has that exhausted dead look.

Turns out we are not perfect parents. Turns out we have no clue what we are doing. Turns out we are kind of a dumpster fire family. Turns out we would not have it any other way. With all of our flaws comes lots of fun. We laugh a lot. We play a lot. We love a whole lot. That makes our life perfect for me…

P.S. To the other families out there worriying about your kid that walked out of the door with a stained shirt and a chocolate milk mustache: Take comfort in knowing, we get you at the House of Taylortots.