Look up "hands-off" parenting in the dictionary, and you'll see my picture.
I wasn't made for motherhood.
My womb doesn't give a throb when I see someone's crinkly, red-faced, screaming new baby. Holding someone's (usually smelly and/or loud and/or irritating) baby doesn't make me long for another one of my own - not even for one single solitary second. I don't CARE how much they weighed at birth, how long they were, how loudly they cried.
You can tell me if you want, but three seconds later it's as if you never mentioned it - the stats are gone from my mind.
Seriously, I have much better uses for my memory storage capacity, like the fact that Erwin Rommel was known as The Desert Fox or obscure movie quotes from movies nobody but me has ever seen ("I'll curse if I WANT to curse! DAMN DAMN HELL DAMN TEE-TEE DOO-DOO!") or that Barbie's full name is Barbara Millicent Roberts.
You know. The important stuff.
Ask me about my kids' milestones. How old was my daughter when she took her first steps?
Um. I'm not sure. She was little.
First words? Uh...
Did I write it in the baby book? Maybe, but I'm not really sure exactly where the baby books are. I'm sure they're around here somewhere. In the house. Probably.
Honestly it's a wonder they're not feral.
Or maybe they are...my daughter certainly learned to forage at an early age. She was around 3 or 4 when I woke up one morning and went into the kitchen - and the refrigerator door was wide open, there were two open jars (one grape jelly, one Miracle Whip) on the floor with the lids off, and a butter knife.
My daughter said to me (okay, so clearly this means she was talking and walking at age three-ish/four-ish) "I was hungry so I made a mandayse sandwich and a jelly sandwich. Josh didn't want any." (let me just point out here that Joshua is non-verbal, yet she always claimed to know what he wanted. Probably she was right)
Same age, one morning she brought me breakfast in bed -- a piece of chocolate cake.
I asked her how she got such a nice piece of cake by herself, and she said, "Wiv a butter knife but I was berry careful."
I took this to mean I no longer had to prepare her meals and could turn over the cooking to her capable little (wee tiny) hands.
I do love sandwiches and cake, you know.
As soon as she was tall enough to (climb on a stepstool and) reach the washing machine controls, she learned to do laundry as well. Except for that one incident with the candy and bubblegum left in a pocket, I've never regretted that decision.
When she was learning her numbers, I figured that it's never too early to learn how to play Texas Hold 'Em. IT WAS PURELY IN AN EDUCATIONAL CAPACITY. Plus we played for M&Ms and I loves me some M&Ms.
And really, who DOESN'T use liquid Tylenol to teach their kid how to do shots? IT IS A LIFE SKILL.
And so what if I talked her into taking a bite of a dog biscuit that one time? She was always pretending to be a wolf anyway. Plus also dog biscuits are totally edible for people. IT WAS LIFE-SAVING INFORMATION SO THAT SHE WOULD NEVER STARVE.
Oh okay, I guess I have to be a little more hands-on for Joshua, since he is like a baby and can't do anything for himself. Probably it's one of those disguised blessings, since I would have failed more miserably if I'd had to chase both of them.
And he does shake hands when you say "How do you do?" SO THERE.
But despite my best efforts to ruin them, my kids have actually turned out better than most - and I say that in a purely I-don't-really-like-kids unbiased way.
And in case you were planning to call DHS, I should tell you that they're over 18 now so HA HA HA.
*disclaimer: this is totally about ME ONLY, so if you're one of the women who love to have babies and be surrounded by children and love having even more - more power to you. Some of my friends have 5 or more children and they excel at it. I'm just not one of you.
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