May your turkey be moist, your stuffing seasoned just right, your sweet potatoes not singed, your apple pie flaky and warm. Hope your after stuff your face nap is enjoyable as well!
Smarts
•November 24, 2009 • 3 Comments
As a parent you try not to play favorites. It’s hard but you try not to. It’s a fact of life one is going to edge out the other in one way or the other. It could be the one that realizes it’s nice to play quietly, without you having to ask him to, when you have a migraine. It could be the one that coddles you when you are sick and asks if it’s time for you to take your meds yet. It might be the one that takes something apart and improves on it before putting it back together. It could be something simple as one looks more like you than the other. Try as you might it’s not always easy to not play favorites.
Now, I don’t love any one of my kids more than the other. I wouldn’t push one out of the way of a moving vehicle and not the other. I would totally beat someone with a baseball bat if they physically hurt either of them and wouldn’t be the least bit bothered by it. I bend over backwards for either and try to make sure both are happy and content. Yet there are little moments that make you wonder if you should favor one over the other because of something they do.
I had a dentist appointment last week. Now, I had padded enough time into the appointment to get there and back before they got home so I didn’t hand out a key. (No, they don’t get keys all the time because they have lost four of them since the start of the school year.) I had two and a half hours to get to the appointment and back which should have been plenty of time. Notice the words ’should have been’. At 2:30, the time they get home, I was still sitting at the dentists office. Someone had screwed up and people were seen out of order from their appointment times. There was someone there that left as I went in that had been there since 11:00. I knew it was cold and rainy outside and I was antsy that the kids were either stuck sitting in the hallway or weren’t smart enough to get in out of the rain and were outside playing. I hauled ass home and by this time I was forty five minutes late. There in the hallway sat the oldest, I started to apologize while looking around for the youngest. He cut me off and said, “Hunter went and got a key from the manager so we could get in. “ Huh, I didn’t even think they’d think to do that. So, I went on in and there was my youngest, in his room doing his homework so he could go outside to play. He said, “I got a key from the manager, don’t worry I took it back after I used it.”
Now, I wonder if my oldest would have thought to do that or if he would have just dropped his bag off at the door and went out to play. He may be mechanically inclined but he’s more of an in the box thinker if something can’t be taken apart and improved upon. In that moment my youngest became my favorite because he actually thought to go get a key from the manager so he could get inside and do his homework. Don’t worry, I won’t play favorites but I at least can worry a little less (well, until they do something stupid like play frisbee in the house and knock a tooth out). The youngest got a key to keep warm and I’m pretty sure the oldest would have just said screw it and gone out in the rain to play.
