Not that I am or will be one of those parents who thinks my kid is perfect. That is certainly not the case. I just feel like M2's dirty diapers, crying, and whining are all an extension of me. It is definitely true what they say about it being totally different when it is your own child. Wiping her ass is like wiping my own (though I will admit, there have been some diaper changes where I was trying not to gag). I am used to her cry and do not find it as grating on my ear as the sound of other people's kids crying.
We have some lovely friends whom we hang out with on a regular basis. They are great people, but their kids are a handful. Their oldest is 2 1/2 and she is a bit of a terror. When they come to our house, she runs around and pulls things off the table, out of cupboards, rips things off my fridge (like tonight when she pulled off our front row tickets to a play for tomorrow night, luckily I saw what was happening and was able to free the tickets from her grubby little hands). Her parents just sit, hang out and act like it is perfectly acceptable for her to run wild.
I totally get it that kids will grab things. That is what childproofing is all about, and when M2 is crawling or walking we will make amendments to our house to ensure it is safe for her exploration. But when we take her to other people's houses I will not expect them to have things kid proofed. I will watch her, and keep her contained. I'll bring her toys, keep her near me, or follow her where she goes. I find it completely unacceptable that certain people we know have this laissez faire attitude about letting kids roam free when they are guests in someone else's house. My parents totally had us trained on how to behave when we were out, and I expect my kids will learn the same from me.
These particular friends don't come over all that often, we usually go to their house since they have 2 kids that are mobile and we just have one portable child. Tonight when they were over I was reminded of how much I hate having them come over. Luckily no wine glasses were broken this evening... Over a year ago, these friends thought it was really funny and cute to bring a wine glass to their 1+ year old daughter's mouth so she could taste the wine. Ha ha, right? Yeah, well through that she developed a liking for wine. And she knows what wine glasses look like and what they contain. Now she will grab for glasses, and if they are left on the low height coffee table, she will grab them and try to drink out of them. We have hardwood floors, so a 2 year old dropping a delicate wine glass almost always ends badly. That one child has broken half a set of glasses at our house over the course of the past year or so.
Mostly this post is just a vent, no real moral to the story.
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