The words "pick your battles" never rang truer for me. I struggle -- some days more than others -- to raise two, we'll say "spirited," little boys, and the only way I am going to make it through the next decade-and-a-half without running from the house in a fit of insanity is by picking my battles very, very carefully.
Basically, I could spend the entire day saying "no" to them, correcting their behavior and / or completing freaking out on them. So, I am working to become the Zen mamma of letting sh-t slide.
Just to give you an example of what's going on here, and why I need to lower my expectations for reasonable behavior at this point, here are a few things that have happened in the past eight hours.
1. Levi asks for ice cubes for his spaghetti. I try to tell him that although ice cubes in hot soup work fine, ice cubes on a pile of spaghetti really don't have the same effect. But he insists, and so I give him one, then two, then three ice cubes to plop atop his spag. Levi claims ice on pasta "makes it slippery and delicious."
2. Finger painting the sink. Tonight, the boys ask to finger paint, but "not on paper." Instead, they want to squirt the finger paint in the kitchen sink, swirl it around in the basin, and then wash it down the drain with the sprayer. Sure, why not. It's been 30 minutes of messy, water-wasting sink art, but hey, it's allowing me to write this blog.
3. Round-the-clock nudity. Have I mentioned that I live with two dwarf-sized nudists? Apparently the angels told my boys on the way down that our place is clothing optional. For years, I've done everything to convince them wearing clothing is cool, including making up a song "Everybody must wear pants" to the tune of "Everybody must get stoned." (It didn't work.) So now, I just let 'em disrobe. This afternoon, naked Levi actually had the nerve to say he's cold. So I said, "Then put on some clothes." So he said, "I don't like buttons." So I said, "Your clothes don't have buttons." So he said, "I don't like clothes without buttons either." You see what I'm dealing with here?
Molly Snyder started writing and publishing her work at the age 10, when her community newspaper printed her poem, "The Unicorn.” Since then, she's expanded beyond the subject of mythical creatures and written in many different mediums but, nearest and dearest to her heart, thousands of articles for OnMilwaukee.
Molly is a regular contributor to FOX6 News and numerous radio stations as well as the co-host of "Dandelions: A Podcast For Women.” She's received five Milwaukee Press Club Awards, served as the Pfister Narrator and is the Wisconsin State Fair’s Celebrity Cream Puff Eating Champion of 2019.
