Life is so hard when you’re not yet five

Things that have caused my daughter to burst into tears in the past few days:

• If we get a bounce house for her birthday party, all the party guests might want to use jump in it at the same time and there won’t be any room for her.
• What if, when we get to the toy store, they don’t have the Barbie she wants and she can’t find anything else in the hundreds of thousands of items they have in stock that could make her happy?
• In a fit of artistic glee, she traced around her “Fresh Beat Band” poster in her room with a blue marker, staining the paint.  Now we can never make the wall pink again, ever.  (Admittedly, I don’t want her coloring on the wall, but the fact that we still have a half-gallon of pink paint in the living room closet just barely calmed her down.)
• She knocked down one of the pushpins holding a corner of her “Tangled” poster and couldn’t bear the thought of waiting until morning to fix it.
• The weekend is still three days away.
• Robbie always wakes up earlier than her and gets first pick of what we watch on TV.
• She accidentally drew a line across a wall in a maze in one of her coloring books, and there’s just no way to recover from that.
• And 52 “what-if” scenarios that require many leaps of preschooler logic to follow.

She’s exhausting.

However, knowing that I used to tell jokes and then cry when people laughed at them, I understand that she comes by this honestly.

So I guess what I’m saying is, I owe my mother a drink.  Or a hundred.

Well

At the very least, I finally have some visible bruises after an injury.  But, I must admit, I didn't really want so many:

Good thing I was playing with my phone while walking down the stairs on Sunday, or else I would have missed all those awesome Facebook posts about what people were having for dinner.  WORTH IT.

Reminder

It's been a while, so I just wanted to remind you that my kids are freaking cute.  Here you go:

Still here

Hey there, how are you?  You probably don’t remember me, as I disappeared for a few months and the internet has a short memory. (Or a long one, if you’re trying to maintain your privacy, I guess.)

Here’s a brief recap of the past few months:

November:

• Ugh, gotta get ready for finals.

December:

• Ugh, gotta study for the nursing school entrance exam.
• Christmas!  Yay!  My house has more Thomas the Train stuff than I previously knew existed!
• Shit, Rob’s contract wasn’t renewed, and now we’re in frantic job-hunting mode again.

January:

• Holy shitsnacks, COBRA is expensive.
• Robbie turned two!  He’s adorable!
• Yay!  I got into nursing school!
• Wait, what?  I only get a week to buy my books and prepare for the start of nursing school?  Um, all right.
• Do I quit my job for school?  Do I try to do both?  How can I justify quitting my job when Rob isn’t working?  If I don’t quit my job, how can I handle 16 credits of school?  (Nursing school, at that.)  I can’t NOT take this chance to go to school, because getting in is competitive, and they might not accept me the next time around.  ARGH.
• Time to take a leap of faith and quit the job.  Oh god, oh god, oh god.
• So, um, Rob’s going to find a job soon, right?  Right?
• Holy shitsnacks, nursing school is intense.

February:

• Holy shitsnacks, COBRA is expensive.
• What is this holiday you speak of?  Valentine’s Day?  I don’t … what?  No, I don’t really have time for that.  Do you see this 10-pound pharmacology book I’m reading?
• So, um, Rob’s going to find a job soon, right?  Right?  What about that one interview?  And that other one?  Please?

March:

• Holy shitsnacks, COBRA is expensive.
• Nursing school continues to be intense and busy, but a routine has emerged that makes it manageable.
• Rob got a job offer this week, and starts soon – during my Spring Break, actually, so I get the house to myself.
• The best part?  His health insurance starts April 1, so we won’t have to pay for another round of COBRA.  Because, hey, did you guys know that health insurance is expensive as fuck?  Because it is.
• Spring Break is almost here.  I intend to sleep through it.

And how are you doing?  Helloooo?  Anyone still out there?

Karen strikes again

“Karen says if you eat too much you get flat,” Kaylee said to me the other day.

I really wonder what’s going on in Kaylee’s head when she hears a statement like that.  Is she imagining eating a bunch of food and magically flattening into a Kaylee-shaped piece of paper, capable of sliding under doors?  In that case, maybe she thinks becoming flat sounds pretty awesome.

Amusing preschooler translation mistakes aside, it hurt my heart a little bit to hear Kaylee say that she’s already receiving the message not to eat too much.

Fine, ok, obesity is an epidemic and blah blah fucking blah.

But Kaylee is four years old.

Can we wait a little longer before I have to worry about other people promoting an unrealistic body image for my child?  Can we wait a little longer before she starts thinking she needs to be stick-thin to be accepted?  Can we wait a little longer before my underweight child starts watching her figure?

I kind of want to rant now about the society we live in that values beauty over substance, and about the indoctrination of children into a cult of superficial bullshit that turns them into judgmental little bullies.

But I just … I just can’t today.  I don’t have the energy to pull all that frustration into a coherent blog post.

Instead I’ll take a deep breath and remind Kaylee that she’s beautiful, no matter what. And then I’ll try to get her to eat another chicken nugget.  (And some vegetables.  Sheesh, calm down.)