At the end of a long day spent with my kids, I often wonder why parents don’t walk around in full body armor. Between the hardness of their heads which register on the moh scale somewhere in the neighborhood of “diamond” and the flailing limbs of which they seem to have 12 each, being near them sometimes equals pain.
Don’t get me wrong. They’re hilarious creatures whose company can be delightful, but my three year old bloodied my lip with a dramatic rendition of “The Sun Will Come Out Tomorrow” and my 9 year old almost impaled me during a game of tag IN THE SAME DAY.
Everyone talks about the sleepless nights, the pain of actual childbirth, how much it hurts to step on stray legos that get camouflaged into the carpet. But I was given no warning that some average days feel full on Braveheart.
Recently, after waking up by being slammed in the face by the back side of my sleeping (yet thrasy) toddler’s head, I polled a few friends. “At what point in parenthood will the natural reaction to being whacked about the head move past ‘blinding rage’?”
The absolute unanimous response was “never. ever.”
So maybe the knee jerk reaction won’t change. But I do know that the reflexes my husband and I have developed as self preservation rival that of cats.
ParentCo.
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