Our Kid

Our kid is the one with grubby clothes, whether from mud or flour or paint. It doesn't matter how many times I change her clothes, they become grubby almost instantaneously. In the twenty seconds it takes to get from her room to the front door and thence to the car, she can find a hidden stash of her flour to spread all over herself.

Our kid, in fact, is the one whose clothes ALL have stains. There is no "Sunday best" in her wardrobe. I have given up on trying to get the stains all out. We just wash 'em and weep.

Our kid is the one whose face is always grubby too. Face washing involves high speed pursuit, so even if I think I've gotten all the blueberry, there's always some somewhere. And, of course, she has a stash of snacks in the armrest of her car seat, so even a clean face is grubby by the time we get anywhere.

Our kid hates to have her hair messed with. It gets washed once a week and brushed as best I can once a day. Forget such niceties as hair clips. They stay in for five minutes at most and then they're removed by force. Ponytails, when her hair was long enough, invoked lots of screaming.

Our kid never willingly leaves a park. She's the one who weeps and wails when, after two and a half hours, I tell her it's time to go home. The library we can only leave without similar drama by promising to read EVERY SINGLE new book as soon as we get home. I guess there are worse bribes.

And to the parents of all the tidy, well groomed, compliant toddlers out there...phhhlllbbbttt.