Dumb Things I Do for My Kids

This morning I found myself blow-drying a pair of jeans at 5:30 AM while my husband walked around the yard in his pajamas, checking the bushes and behind the shed to make sure our seventeen-year-old son could make it from the house to his car without being shot by a Nerf dart. (long story involving a slow dryer and an on-going game)

Sadly, I don't think these are even the weirdest things we've done for our kids.

I'm pretty sure most moms would take a bullet for their kid, and all of them went through some kind of agony to get them here in the first place, but it's the daily, crazy, not-really-life-or-death-but-still-vitally-important-in-their-world things we do that show how much we love them.(Or how insane we are.)

Like the times when we drop everything and go running to the school to answer the inevitable call, "Mom, I forgot my ________ (lunch money, homework, 2 dozen chocolate dinosaur-shaped cupcakes, permission slip, $50 for the yearbook and it has to be in today or I won't get one and you wouldn't want me to forget my entire freshman year would you?). Oh, and by-the-way I told them you could chaperone yet another field trip to the state capital. (After four kids, cub scouts and Exchange Students I'm pretty sure I could give the entire tour verbatim by now.)

It's the late-nights we spend gluing foam balls on a piece of poster-board for science fair projects. It's the elephant costumes and hot-dog pinewood derby cars we allow ourselves to get talked into trying to create even though we lack sewing, carving, and any other artistic skills. (The hotdog car won by the way.)

It's the pets we feed and clean up after when our kids forget about or out-grow them in spite of the, "I absolutely swear, sealed with a kiss, ten things I will do every single day if you let me have a guinea pig" list that you found posted on your bedroom door three years ago.

It's the dress up like a princess, Lego space-ship, sleep-over with fourteen of your closest (and apparently loudest) friends, lengths we go to in order to appear to as a hero in our kid's eyes or to make their lives just a little bit easier, sweeter, or more fun.

It's being a parent. Yes, sometimes it's a bit insane. (I'm still waiting for the moment when my kids fall at my feet and thank me for the Halo costume that took me weeks to create and was abandoned for something out of the dress-up trunk on the way out to go trick or treating.)

But it's never boring.