Have you ever heard the saying, “Have kids, they said. It will be fun, they said?”
Let me tell you from firsthand experience—parenting is exhausting.
As you may or may not know, I am on my second set of four-pawed kids in my life. This current set are the most animalistic of them all. They snuggle and take up my bed space. They argue and fight like sisters, but are the first to defend one another if danger pokes its scary head into our lives. And by dangerous, I mean the vacuum cleaner. That evil thing, according to the two mutts, is the demise of our universe and it is only their vicious barking that saves our world. True story.
While I thought having to feed, and water, and poop, and walk the mutts was tiring, I had no idea how difficult little humans were to watch and defend. Definitely not as difficult as saving the world from the vacuum cleaner, but pretty gosh darn close.
Over this past weekend, we attended a U-11 baseball tournament. I might have to interject here. We were watching my nephew play ball. It was not a creepy, peeping-tom sort of situation. Just to be clear. Looking back, I think I see how this happened, but if you ever met my friend, you might question your thoughts as much as I still do to this day. Bottom line, I was a parent of one of those little human people for forty-eight hours and I’m beat.
It all started with an UNO game. My little seven-year-old new friend wasn’t holding her cards properly. Her little, tiny fingers didn’t fan out the cards so she could easily see all the different colors and numbers. Exhausting. So, as the bigger person, I took the cards from her little grasp and showed her how to organize her playing hand. It just made sense. Together we played our corrupt opponent, eye to eye, dancing the salsa, and twisting our fates in the ultimate game of life…or, UNO, as some call it.
We won! Regardless of how we won, we won. Victory was ours and then we danced the victory dance. Maybe another time I’ll show you what that looks like. Until then, trust me, it was awesome.
At the fields on a sunny Saturday morning, my friend, and also the biological mother of that tiny human, let me know that I was in charge of the little one for the day. What? How? What do I do? To make that long story shorter, I had to make sure she was not stolen or hurt.
My mind wandered, searching for every possible outcome of unnatural destruction, which include, but not limited to, dragon fighting and leprechauns. It was a frightening experience. I mean, there were so many little children running amuck, anything could have happened.
The biological mother just kept looking back from the bleachers, asking, “Where’s your daughter? Where’s your daughter?”
Ahhhh! I wasn’t looking. My nephew just hit a double with two RBI’s. Frantically, after seeing my guy safe at second, I searched the playground. Only to realize that all the little humans looked alike. What was she wearing? Did she have shoes on? Swings? Slide? Ladder? Big green blob thing that doesn’t look very fun to play on? Where was she? OMG!
Of course, I couldn’t let on that I couldn’t find her little one I was in charge of. I casually looked at her, “She’s fine. She’s great. She’s under the green blob thing,” I lied.
Finally, my sweat stopped pouring from my forehead. She was on…oh, no…our UNO opponent’s lap. This couldn’t have been my child. My child wouldn’t hang out with the competition. She would give them dirty looks.
I was so exhausted by all the parenting and so happy to go home where normal people keep their children (dogs) and eventually go to bed where half of it is taken up by furry little creatures. Our conversations are so much easier. I talk. They listen. No back talk. Just me and my kids rockin’ it out and fighting the evils of the world, aka, the vacuum cleaner.