I Guess I'm Pretty Lucky After All.........

I have said it before, and I'll say it again.....

Parenting is nothing but blind luck.

There is no reason for some good people to be "rewarded" with offspring that turn out to be hell on wheels.

There is also no good reason for some people (**cough cough**) who sowed their own wild oats in their younger days to be rewarded with offspring that turn out to be pretty awesome human beings.

You really never know what kind of kid you're going to end up with. You go through each stage of development and wonder if you're strong enough to make it through the next one.

Potty training? It can go on for years.

Accidents? I can't blame her for the trip to the emergency room when another kid smashed her tiny little finger in a cabinet door, but let's talk about the time she nearly tore her uvula off. Because she liked the sound the baton made when you blew into the end of it. AFTER you removed the protective rubber tip.

Hair? I'm still apologizing for the pigtails. Sorry, Sweet Girl.

Clothing? We never had many problems with this one. Bless her.

After the difficult teenage years, after graduation, you wonder what's next. And you find out that the hardest thing you will ever do is drop your child off at the Navy Recruiting Station and watch her climb in that van. When the clothes she was wearing that day arrive in a box the next week, you will think your heart has exploded in your chest.

You stand back and watch them make their own decisions, even when you're pretty sure they're wrong, and you hope that the heartbreak of mistakes won't scar them for life.

You hope the mistakes you make that they remember forever won't outnumber the good things, which they tend to forget.

You realize one day that you and your child have had an adult conversation without any eye-rolling on either end of the telephone.

And then you read a blog post like this one.

Suddenly everything that has ever made you cringe, cry, bellow, bitch, fuss, fight, grumble, gripe, shout and shrug.......

..... they've all been worth it.