It’s Good To Be a Kid….

Some days, I don’t want to be the adult. I want to be the kid.

Why, you ask?

Let me tell you:

ONE: Grocery Shopping

As a kid, you ask mom if you can have something, and if you’re lucky, it magically appears in the cupboard/refrigerator (or you get to go with her to the store where you can try to sneak things into the cart).

Now I know how all that food must get there, and it’s not so “magical”. *sighs*

TWO: Cleaning toilets

As a child, you might have to set the table, or take out the trash or make your bed, but my mom never made me scrub toilets.

Personally, I think all mothers SHOULD make their sons scrub toilets, because then perhaps they’d learn to take better aim. ‘Nuff said….

THREE: Keeping the Rules

The fun part of being a grown up is getting to make the rules in the house. The not-so-fun part is having to uphold them, i.e., be the bad guy all the time.

We are pretty clear with our rules, and discipline when we need to but I’m soft, SOFT I tell you, and half the time I feel like I’m crushing their little spirits shoving them into time out or taking away play dates, but you can’t show weakness. You’ve got to follow-through. I really struggle with the follow through.

FOUR: What Metabolism?

When I was a kid, my mom would do “breakfast for dinner” and make piles of pancakes. I could easily pack away six or seven, and I was a scrawny thing. Somewhere along the way my metabolism deserted me completely, and now all I have to do is LOOK at the pancakes and touch the bottle of Aunt Jemima and I gain weight.

FIVE: Breakfast time

I loved breakfast cereals as a kid: Life, Kix, Count Chocula, Lucky Charms, Sugar Corn Pops.

Now I eat greek yogurt with berries, or Special K. Sensible, healthy stuff. Adult stuff. Tastes ok – I call my yogurt concoctions “parfaits” to make me feel fancy. But. Grown-ups aren’t supposed to eat kids’ cereals. Oh…and see reason “four”.

Six: Sleeping Soundly

My kids sleep like the dead. Motherhood has turned me into an in-house security system. I hear every noise, every raspy breath or cough my kids emit, every bump in the house.

Well, everything except for my husband’s alarm clock, thank heavens….

Seven: Wearing whatever you want, wherever you want

For my daughter, striped leggings with a striped dress is perfectly logical. So is adding ladybug rain boots and a tiara. And she looks adorable. (Me, I’d look like a crazy lady. Just hand me some cats and I’d be good to go.)

Kids can get away with wearing anything, no matter how crazy. (Don’t you wear your Cinderella dress with your superhero cape? And dummy? To watch cartoons?) If I had gotten Personalized Superhero Capes for the kids like a fellow momma did, I wouldn’t be surprised if they never took them off! (But like I said, they’d get away with it 100%)

They can also wear swimsuits without feeling the need to cover up or throw up. You don’t see chubby six-year-olds panicking about how they look (thank goodness).

*This would be an excellent segue to Mama Kat’s bonus blog prompt: What’s Your Swimsuit Style? But it’s not.

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This post was inspired by one of this week’s prompts at Mama Kat’s Writers Workshop.