"Kids will Change Your Life"

You know how, before you have kids everyone tells you that having them will change your lives? Saying only that its life changing is like saying that electroshock therapy is going sting a bit. I mean really people, a little more warning than the simple "oh, kids are life changing" would have been nice! Even if it was accompanied by a smugly superior look. (That's very annoying by the way)

First they are babies and are undeniably adorable. But they have to be. Or least we have to see them that way. That very adorableness triggers instincts in grown ups that turns spit up on shirts, fifteen poopy diapers a day, and two hours of sleep a night into something, if, well not desirable, at least tolerated. Without those cuteness suspectible genes we all have, lots of babies would find themselves back at the hospital from which they came, complete with a dirty diaper and their full complement of car seat, baby carrier, stroller, bottles, nipples, diapers, baby wipes, butt powders, shaky, crinkly toy thing, and 500 onsies with those annoying and impossible snaps between the legs. (Nothing like being kicked in the face by a squirming baby while trying to get them snapped).

Then they get older and turn two, or in some case only 18 months and its like a demon has invaded your cute, cuddly child. Only now since its been so long, you love this thing completely and so now also must love the demon. Yea! It throws things, it lays on the floor and screams, completely oblivious to other shoppers, diners, cars in the parking lot or the sensitive hearing of your two doors down and across the street neighbors cat. The demon controlling what used to be your child says NO for everything. Do you want to get dressed. NO. Will you eat your spaghetti? NO. Will you please stop throwing your dirty diaper at Mommy? NO NO NO. Splat.

And still, through all of this you hug them and kiss them and buy them candy (demons love candy, it gives them lots of energy for those big murals on your dining room wall!), you think about their wants and needs before yours and you acquire that pale, haunted, glassy eyed look of someone whose "life has changed a little". You remember (when you have time to think at all between snacks, bottles, getting that dead weight in and out of the car seat, picture books, potty training, and trying to convince your 2 year old not to eat the wallpaper) when life was all about something else. Whatever it was. You went to movies and you ate out at restaurants without worrying about someone crawling around under the table touching old gum or if the person next to you was going to throw boogers at the people the next booth.

Then they are five and they teeter on the edge of being real people. People with whom you can have an actual conversation, who sometimes care about things outside themselves and for a brief and shining moment you think, "Phew" and you see the light at the end of the tunnel.

And then they take that open bag of cat food and an open bag of pasta and they make like crop dusters all over their room, making sure that no inch of floor space, no hidden recesses of any drawer, shelf or corner is left without attention. The window sills look bumpy, the floor is crunchy, and the sheets smell like cat food. Even the ceiling has smudges. But after the yelling, and the cleaning up and the meteing out of whatever the punishment, even though you are so angry you could easily strangle them in their sleep, when you feel their little hand on your face, asking for your forgiveness you crumble and hug them and rock them to sleep and you realize that all those people were right after all, your life did change and despite it all, it is so desperately better!