In case you were wondering, that's the wind screaming, not me.

It's been the kind of day where I show up to swimming lessons. After they're done. I'm having too many of those days. Between schooling my own children, the end of the first semester at the school I work for, X-Man on the verge of actually being potty trained and Cinco walking.....I'm losing my mind. Actually I've lost it. My mind feels as if it were stuffed with cotton. And not the good, clean cotton Raggedy Anne got. It makes blogging hard, because well....I think I sprained my brain.  So I'm enjoying wandering off into the iterwebz.

Something that I've come across a few times is the blog Reasons My Son Is Crying.  It started out as pictures of some guy's toddler crying because his snow boots didn't fit on his ears and morphed into something bigger where parents submitted pictures of toddler melt downs due to mom insisting on cutting their spaghetti before serving. The whole thing is fairly amusing because almost every parent has, at some point in time, desperately tried to mush the two halves of the banana together in order to appease the screaming tiny human.

But of course, it being the internet, there were people who were tut tuting the whole thing. Denouncing it as "disgusting" and "laughing at children for having emotions." I admit, I did struggle through her whole blog post and then chuckled at how very.....for lack of a better term, new at parenting she seemed.

I am most certainly a mother that author would tut tut at. Not only did I briefly consider posting a picture of X-Man to the crying child blog, it was X-Man sitting on the potty. Which she frowns on too, but that's a different post. There he was, curly head of sorrow in his hands, fake crying. Oh sure, those sobs were wracking his body, although there were no tears involved. He wanted to watch My Little Ponies, I said "you have to use the potty first" and he wailed. For the record, the fact that X-Man still feels the need to completely strip before using the potty was what kept me from snapping the shot.

The thing is, the parents were sharing these photos away from their children, precisely because they weren't interested in laughing at their children or in the presence of their children. But yes, they were most certainly laughing at the absurdity of the situation.

The amount of wailing involved with brushing X-Man's teeth is down right preposterous. The fact that I removed his footed pajamas after he dumped oatmeal down them, inside them, is reasonable. The fact I had to wrestle him, while he shrieked is ridiculous. It's 18 degrees outside, and I refused to roll down the car window tonight. So he pounded on it, and yes, cried. And rather than be frustrated by it, I rolled my eyes and thought, "well, I guess this will go in the blog."

Parents need outlets. They need to step back and breathe, They need to be able to laugh at the fact that their lives are being run into the ground by an army of tiny people they created. And they need to be reassured that yes indeed, your kiddos are just like everyone else's. Except, of course, that they are special little snowflakes.

And that's what I saw with the parents sharing and laughing about the posts. It was familiar. It was somewhere we had all been. And it's somewhere, at least I would, like to still be.

from "reasons my son is crying"

See, it's crazy frustrating to have to go through three different sippy cups until the correct color has been selected. It's enough to drive you batty when you attempt to change a diaper and are treated like a Gitmo employee. Never mind that the child will take off running, buns in the ai,r sans the most precious diaper in the whole world ever. And don't get me started on the absurdity of sitting on the potty and not being allowed to dip mom's and dad's toothbrushes in it.

But there are solutions to every one of those problems. We love these children so much that we will smush their cheese halves back together. We will dig through the underwear drawer to find Thomas underpants. We will bundle them up for a fun day in the snow, walk outside and agree that yes, it is too ridiculously cold to be out here any more and head back inside. And then back out. And then in. Cleaning the snow off the wood floor too many times to count.

from "reasons my son is crying"

We do this because these are the problems we can fix. And there is a comfort in this. There will come a day when kids will be hurtful, someone will be excluded, bullying will occur. Our children will cry tears we cannot dry. And the mom who chased down the balloon sailing away year ago, would give anything to prevent and avoid these emotions. Even if that means remaking a sandwich three different times in order to make sure it's cut just the right way.

There is a joy and a delight that comes with a life whose biggest challenge is that his hands cannot hold ALL THE CARS. It's a simple time. It's an easy time. And when the horse can't fit in the batmobile, you're going to laugh. And you should. Laughing with other parents, why not? It's a celebration of innocence. It's a precious time when we can fix things....mostly.

I'm a few more years into this parenting thing than the disapproving mother. And I'm not one to really pull the experience card. But I wish my older kiddos still cried because they couldn't fit into the refrigerator. I wish the biggest problem facing them today was the number of purple goldfish crackers they received. I miss that simpler time, and I enjoy remembering it. Because my heart didn't hurt as much when the doughnut didn't have the right color of sprinkles on it.

from "reasons my son is crying"