Tuesday, April 9, 2013

Reasons My Friends Are Crying

On facebook last night I saw this blog called Reasons My Son is Crying.  Basically it's just pictures of him crying, with very straightforward captions underneath.  If you've spent any time at all around a toddler, you will recognize these as absolutely true, and the more of them in a row I read, the funnier they get.

Now of course, it would be a bad thing to make your kid cry just to take his picture, or to keep from giving him things he legitimately needs, or do things that are unsafe.  But there's really no sense that any of that is going on.  It's stuff like "This milk is not juice."  "He asked me to butter his rice.  I buttered his rice."  He probably asked his mom twenty five times to butter the rice, and the instant it was done he changed his mind.  It's a very accurate depiction of life with little kids.

And wow, it looks like they're on Good Morning America because of this.  On the one hand, I wish I'd thought of doing it first with my kids, and on the other hand, wow, that's a lot of pictures of the poor kid crying.  I feel like they need a companion blog where they show him eating cotton candy and running around with unicorns.  And I hope it makes them some money, because those boys are gonna be mortified by this whole thing in about 13 years.

Crying kids that don't belong to me are a different story though.  Yes, you know intellectually that your child probably has a tantrum or cries at daycare at some point.  You don't really need to see pictoral evidence of it though.  If Duchess and O'Malley had been in daycare as toddlers, I doubt I'd have wanted pictures of that. Even now, if the kindergarten class did something like this, I'd be sad that O'Malley cried at school.  There's too much mom guilt in the world already for that!  This blog is for cute things and art and funny anecdotes, not for sad faces.  However, I have been captioning some of our little episodes in my head this morning.  And like the dad said in the video, this are tiny things that last about seven seconds and then the kids get happy and move on.

Actually, it's made for a very cheerful day so far (at least for me) because crying is not bothering me one little bit.  Thinking of interesting captions is a lot more entertaining than getting frustrated by whining. When you break it down to such a small thing, it's actually easier to be sympathetic.  You wanted to be naked.  Kelli made you put on your pants.  Yeah, that's sad.  But look!  Now you have pants on and we can go play!  It makes a lot of things easily fixable and gives me more patience even if it's not fixable.  He still can't hold his shoe while he walks around wearing it.  But he wants to and I get that.  :)

So here's my morning:

  • The block I threw up in the air fell down and hit me in the head.
  • Ms Kelli cleaned the smelly poop off my leg.  Oh, and my hand now too.
  • I just realized that I can't reach the shoe I tossed over the gate half an hour ago.
  • I can't find the otoscope.  (And yes, she was saying that as she cried)
  • I asked him to sit down next to me.  Now he is sitting next to me.
  • The movie that I asked to watch is on.
  • The second helping of breakfast that I asked for repeatedly is in front of me.
  • I want to run around naked and Ms Kelli made me put on my pants.
  •  I just woke up from a long nap and I am starving.  Ms Kelli is feeding me.
  • I want to hold my shoe while I wear it.
  • My friend is sitting beside me, not touching or bothering me in any way.
  • I am convinced the cup I left in the playroom is in the fridge.
  • This water is not milk.
  • This water is not milk.
  • This water is not milk.

Instead of sad, here's this.  I've never had a big kid fall asleep upright in a chair before.  They used to do it all the time in the little buckle chairs with the tray, but this is a first.  Remy was super sleepy this morning!


Of course, as soon as I laid him down in bed he popped right up and was mad.  I could have titled another one.  "She put me to bed because I fell asleep in my plate."  And seven seconds later, back down and asleep in the bed.  Love my Remy boy.

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