I’ve been debating how I should start this blog post (my first in what almost a year). I’m torn between two cliches:

“Parenting is hard”

or

“I love my kid but….”

It’s odd to feel the need to soften the difficulty of parenting. That somehow admitting it’s difficult is equated to not loving your child.

*My wonderful loving child who is currently pretending to be a tornado on the bedroom floor because she has a sick sense of when mom hides away for some free time*

Of course the difficulty is not equated to loving your child.  I’d take a bullet for my child ( I know another cliche right) but let’s face it, when your lovely daughter or son is channeling their inner demon, at of course the most inappropriate time, pretending childrearing is some instagram dream is just foolish.

Or when you throw a birthday party. Remember back to the magic of your birthday. You’d get hopped up on all kids of sweets, run around crazy with your friends and open presents.

Remember that precious childhood memory.

It was probably horrible for you parents.

Coraline’s fourth birthday party was yesterday.  After spending a good three months lying to myself that I was gonna channel Martha Stewart and countless hours wasted Pinning birthday party ideas from parents that are frankly MUCh more talented than I am, about three weeks ago, I realized that “hey you have a birthday party date announcced on facebook” with nothing prepared for it including a venue.

But since I’m trying to be Zen (I mean I meditated….sometimes…occassionally and it’s not court ordered), I decide to just brand it as “simplistic” and lie to myself that it’ll be a relax ing time.

Who needs Facebook memories? We will just invited family and friends and hold it somewhere local.

Easy Peasy Lemon Squeezy.

That is until it’s 15 minutes befor the party starts and I’m trying to pack everything into my Subaru and hope that I can beat that one annoying party guest who has to show up early.

I’ve spent the night before cooking 4 batches of spaghetti sauce(which frankly I suck at), sent Kyle to decorate becuase frankly I suck at that to. Suprise we find out the kitchen is locked and they forgot to give of the key!

Coraline, who is NEVER sick, somehow magically had a cold and was a crab pants. And I have about twenty guest coming, ten or so of which are children most under the age of 6. And for some reason I planned the party during my child’s nap time (because that was the logical thing to do).

Fast forward an hour, Coraline’s grandfather is telling a lovely famliy story about how his grandfather MURDERED his son. (Which suprise was the first I’ve heard about it).

Coraline and her gaggle of tiny toddler friends have decided to plan dino balloon war which is about as loud as I imagine an actual war to be.  At least I think they were playing, it’s hard to tell if toddlersaurs are actually getting along sometimes.

And this goes on for about five hours.

Yeah parenting is hard. I think I’ll go with that.