The Joy of Parenthood

There are some days where the joy of being a parent just wraps you up in warm fuzzy happiness.

Today was not that day for Appa and I.

Little Bro is teething some pretty major back teeth (3), and it turns out that when you add one passionate and dramatic Big Star and three back molars, you get something that resembles a tiny but fearsome Korean monster whose unnatural war cries can immobilize its enemy with burst ear drums. The puking is a pretty neat trick to protest the pain meds, too. And of course, pain anywhere is pain everywhere, so the act of wearing shoes was probably something the United Nations would agree was torture.

I will be honest when I say it almost came down to rock, paper, scissors to decide who got the....pleasure....of putting our smallest son to sleep tonight. As I am typing this from his room while he rolls around and glares at me for stopping singing time at 50 renditions of the Elephant Song, let it be known that I took one for the team.

Little Bug, our gentle giant of a child, must have watched some National Geographic show recently on toddlers because he suddenly realized that he can and should be directly defiant or oppositional to EVERYTHING his mother or father say, suggest, hypothesize, consider, mentally consider, or send via smoke signal. And when the ten+ time outs get annoying, he decided to kick it up a notch and throw something at his brother's head, resulting in a nasty looking bruise and a NEEDED Mommy timeout so things didn't go freaking nuclear.

I love my children fiercely, I really do, but as soon as both my heavily medicated life joys are snoring away, Appa and I are cracking open a bottle of wine and toasting to the joys of bedtime.