Every time I tell my mother that I am a crappy parent, she feels compelled to give the "crack whore mother of the week" story that some kid couldn't see his mom because she tested positive on her drug test and the court told her to come back and visit her kid when she was clean.

That being said, I am a crappy mother.

Let's start with the vacation eating rules.  I feel that when on vacation, The Boy should not be required to eat his usual daily recommended allowance of five servings of fruits and vegetables.  His father doesn't agree with this but then again, who's ordering the bad food?  We're on vacation, for heaven's sake.  Don't get me wrong.  I don't want to be near him when he has had his third lollipop, cause he becomes a freak.  I try to space out the sugar.  But if I am kicking back a funnel cake at the Fun Park on Balboa Island, why shouldn't he have some too?  This weekend was French Fry weekend.  Other than 4 bites of Dad's breakfast burrito, the child managed to eat french fries almost three times a day for 3 days.  Not that we had french fries at every meal.  He has just figured out how to hide the fries in places that provide opportunity for easy retrieval--under the cushioning of the car seat, under the desk in the hotel, ect.  He alternated his fries with pretzels.

How about the fit he had during the wedding when he decided that "Great is Thy Faithfulness" was not going the way he liked it and he threw himself on the floor screaming?  Thinking on my feet, I smacked my hand right over his mouth.  Nobody wants to be the one whose child screamed and ruined the wedding.  It was then that my son introduced me to a feat that I didn't think possible.  He began screaming out of his nose.  Not to be outdone, I smacked my hand over both his mouth AND his nose and went running from the church.  If you wanted to breathe, you should have thought about that before you decided to go all postal in the middle of a wedding.  Feeling guilty about depriving him of oxygen for our 20 second run, I promptly bought him a Cherry Coke so he would give me just 7 minutes peace.  That's right.  Rewarding bad behavior.  I would do it again in a heartbeat.

Another example of my poor parenting was when The Boy (after spending two days of pushing the fire alarm button in the elevator EVERY TIME WE RODE IT) got his hand caught in the door as it was opening.  As he screamed hysterically, it took his father and the nice man in the elevator about 10 seconds of brute strength to get the door open because his mother, in her hysteria observing his hysteria, was frantically pushing the open button rather than the close button.  2 minutes later he was asking for his "LA!!" and pointing at cars.  So I guess I just bruised his hand rather than permanently maimed him.  I would like to blame my irrationality on pregnancy because no one wants to be the parent that flips out.  But what are you going to do?

There were other incidents but I'm exhausted by myself.  Here's to being funny tomorrow since I missed the mark today.