The Most Frustrating Thing About Parenting Is ...

The most frustrating thing about parenting is when your child is loosing it because you are not immediately taking care of what ever is bothering them, and you are like watching your favorite soap opera, and Tobias finally admits that he slept with Lexus when they were young and he is Storm’s real father, and your kid won’t shut their trap … ONLY KIDDING!

The most frustrating thing IS when your child is loosing it because they do not have the ability to comprehend that what you are currently doing IS an early step in the process of taking care of their needs, like, defrosting the breast milk, or sterilizing the bottles, before they get to eat. (When my toddler has juice I call it drinking, but when my baby has milk I call it eating. Does everyone call babies having a bottle of milk / formula eating, or is it just me?) Another one is having to change a poopy diaper before letting them go play with whatever toy it is that they are currently interested in.

A variation of this is the “two kids crying - on the fly prioritize.” First ascertain the level of trauma, then ponder which situation will take longer to fix, and at this particular time and place which child will be content entertaining themselves while I attend to the other’s problem? If I’m listening to the radio or online and they start to yell because I didn’t attend to them in a timely manner that’s my bad, but getting yelled at while you ARE in the process of taking care of a problem gets frustrating. I understand it’s not like they can help themselves for the most part so I try not to trip, though my toddler has taken to yelling when my little one cries, and not because he needs anything, just because he likes to yell*, which I can not stand for, so I’m like, ”Dude, NO!” 9 times out of 10 he stops the sympathy yelling.
*He loves when I vacuum and sees it as an invitation to yell at the top of his lungs and play chicken with the vacuum cleaner.
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It is interesting when your child uses a word that you have no idea where they learned it from. As I was writing the above passage my toddler was at the desk next to me drawing, and we started talking “businessman speak” for some reason I can’t remember, I said, “You need to fill out that last report before we can send it off,” and he responded, “I’ve got some more contracts to work on before I’m finished.” Which surprised me because it was an appropriate answer within the structure of the “businessman speak” role-playing game, and because I have no idea where he would learn what a contract was?
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This began about seven months ago, but I never got around to blogging it. My toddler has already started up with penis jokes. When he was 2 ½, one day while getting changed he says, “My penis looks like a banana,” and bursts out laughing. This joke is periodically revisited every couple of weeks.