How To Be A Perfect Parent

With my husband in Brazil…yes you heard that correctly…I have been stepping up the parenting of late and I’m thinking I deserve some kind of medal *:

Here are my learnings:

1. When your child yells, “I am stuck!” and you find him in the toilet…with only his head and hands visible….you pull him out.
2. When it’s dark and you step in a puddle, you must refuse to think of what it might be…even if you are in the toilet.
3. Children are meant to be free, if they want to be “naked dudies”, even in the death of winter who am I to get in there way?
4. When you tell your two year old he will not be having his seventh banana of the day and he goes, finds a stool, pulls a banana out of the fruit bowl then walks around eating it whilst you feed the baby….you let it go. Even if he does cackle at you and wave the forbidden banana in your face.
5. Why wouldn’t underwear go on their head? It should have been totally obvious that they were the well known super-hero “underwear head”.
6. Wine, even with all it’s toxicity and dangerous ability to make you see the lighter side of life,  is a necessary evil in parenting alone and one that must be indulged.
7. When your husband is away and your child eerily talks about his death…listen to the rest of the sentence before panicking….as it will end with, “When Daddy is  99”.
8. Do not get annoyed that EVERY time you sit down to feed your little one, another child yells out “wipe my bum”…they obviously genuinely believe that you are always available to them for this purpose…even if they have been doing it themselves for a year.
9. If you scream “sit down when you eat your dinner and do not get up and dance!!” on repeat …. no one will take any notice so save your voice.
10. Time out is the place where screams and cries get louder and more annoying…it is also the place to slip out of before Mum notices and then laugh. Also it’s quite the spot for peeing. They never quite know they need to go until they get in there.
11. The time consuming task of putting your children to bed with a story, a talk about gratitude and the promise to check on them is highly rewarded when you notice your five year old staring at you in the lounge-room below  from his bedroom window…for over half an hour.

And last but certainly not least…..

Next time your husband says, I’m going to Brazil, you send the children with him!

* My parents are staying with me and I have had a ton of help from my in-laws 🙂