it's 1am and poor david has had to remind me to watch my mouth twice today now that we have a tiny human who likes to repeat everything we say, so really, forgive me if this doesn't even make sense. but you know, my boy hemingway told me to write about what hurts and parenting hurts sometimes.
the kind of love you feel for your child is the most pure kind of love in the world because it doesn't have any guile. not a bit. you know when you love your best friend to death but i mean, if she gets a new louis vuitton or if she wins tickets to fiji or if she outscores you on your midterm, you are kind of jealous. doesn't mean you love her any less, she's still your most loyal, wonderful best friend, but you're a little jealous of that louis, you know? and then even sometimes i catch myself being jealous of david. maybe this is just me, maybe this is me just airing all of my insecurities to the world wide web, but when david goes out and works for two hours and makes in that two hours what i made in a whole month, i get a little tinyyyyy bit jealous. and i know, i know, i am not the breadwinner, this is the way our family works, i am so lucky to be a stay at home mom, yadaaaa yadaaaaa, i get it, really. but that tiny tinge of jealousy is still there and i dare you to try to find a love deeper than ours. it just doesn't exist, we are the real deal. even with that tiny tinge of jealousy.
but then you have the love you feel as a parent. and it is pure. for the first time in my life i genuinely want someone to do better, be better, have better than me. and i really don't consider myself a selfish person, but i just really love my daughter in a really pure way. there are several people i would die for, but i imagine (actually i don't even want to imagine, what am i even doing??) that if someone asked me if i would die for her or someone else on my top 6 list of people i would die for, i would react differently -- i would be eager to die for her because i have a divine connection to her, a sort of sacred promise that i would protect her with everything i am.
so then you have this kid with this pure love unlike anything you've ever experienced before and you look at her and you just beam because she is the freaking cutest, sweetest, most wonderful little tiny human in the world and you don't know how you got so lucky that she is yours. you really actually feel that on a regular daily basis. but the world is cold sometimes and people are scary a lot of the time. and your perfect tiny human has to live in this world and it is straight terrifying.
when you become a parent, you get a lot of advice. and i'd be a liar if i said i haven't given a new mom a piece or two of it also, but this is what i've noticed: the moms that i really admire and want to be like, aren't rushing to tell me how to do my job. and i think there's a lot of wisdom to that. and look, i know, we're all doing our best, we've all got different challenges, yada yada yada, but really, i look at some parents sometimes and i pray that i never get like that. there are some parents that scare me and some that i pledge to never turn into, and there are some that inspire me and some that make me want to be better.
so you have perfect tiny human and you have parenting advice being thrown at you and all you can think is that surely, they must not be seeing your child? surely they are not trying to correct your kid, the perfect one playing innocently like an angel. surely they are not trying to give you advice when you are already a damn good parent with a really specific parenting plan and a pretty solid parenting self-esteem. surely, right?
wrong. people are mean and most don't see your kid like you do. but then again people don't see you like you see you either. and that is a really hard pill to swallow sometimes.
i was just thinking about adulthood and how it gets a bad rap. like paying bills and filing tax returns and getting your drivers license renewed, that stuff blows, but you know what doesn't? not having to do anything you don't want to. that is awesome. you know what else is awesome? saying no without having to explain yourself. and let me just give you one more: saying she is my kid and i will parent however i want to, even when you don't agree. because hi, is anyone out there reallyyyyyy a parenting authority? unless you are a mother of at least 5 with a doctorate in child psychology and your kids have all turned out into super awesome, kind, grateful, smart, funny, compassionate human beings, i am going to say no, you are not a parenting authority.
does this post even make sense?
are you still reading?
here's the point of it all: this parenting of ava business is my gig. i'm going to do it how i want to. and guess what, i am a damn good mom. and not in the way that i need to say that to myself to make myself feel better, but in a way that i sleep easy and go to bed happy and wake up excited that i get to be a mom again. david and i race to go get ava out of her crib because we freaking love her. i don't complain about her, i don't act like my life is hard, i don't wish that she wasn't so demanding. i get to play princesses and hide and go seek with her every day and that makes me happier than anything else. parenting is my thing. it is the only thing i have ever always wanted to do.
and i hope that you can say the same thing about your parenting. if you can, i think that is great. if you can't, then whatever, i still think that you are great as long as you are trying. and hey, if your idea of awesome parenting doesn't include letting your kid eat flavor blasted goldfish for breakfast or bedtimes past 11pm or breastfeeding for a year or saying sure! when your kid throws a fit because she wants her juice in the elmo cup because parenting isn't about proving what-you-say-goes (pickkkk your battles, people) then i mean, hey! whatever! go you! because your kids are your gig just like my kid is my gig and to be honest, i don't really give a shit about your kid. (is that too honest again? sorry)
maybe that is the point of this post?
let's just get out of everyone's business and realize that we don't have all the answers. and maybe let's remember that mom-ing is pretty serious business and that criticizing someone's parenting is a really, really low blow.
and let's also make it known that if you mess with my kid i will freaking plot some pretty terrifying ways to destroy you...in my head.
and to the men of the world! if you mess with me, i hear my husband has a really mean right hook. you could ask the three guys he's knocked unconscious, but we are not sure if they are alive.
i wish i was kidding about that last sentence, but i am pretty serious.
muahahaha.
i am a really nice person, i swear.