A little bit of pretty for no reason at all.

So when I wrote the post about being a creepy parent, I was sporting some righteous indignation on behalf of angry parents everywhere. Then… We watched Mary Poppins, again, and I got that damn song stuck in my head. You know the song that Jane and Michael write about the perfect nanny-to-be. These two lines in particular. 

If you won’t scold and d*minate us
We will never give you cause to hate us

D*mination. (In case you’re wondering, the asterisk is an attempt to avoid the attraction of search engines to that particular word. THERE’S NOTHING TO SEE HERE PERVS. WE’RE JUST HAVING A NICE CONVERSATION ABOUT MARY POPPINS. MOVE ALONG. After the mattress post, when I mentioned I would h*ndcuff the mattress to Josie’s a*kle, you should have seen the search terms that were directed to HMN. Yikes! I changed h*ndcuff to attached in a jiffy. Sigh. I have so much to learn.)

Anyway, D*mination is such an ugly word. Perhaps sometimes, my frustration and/or anger is about control or even d*mination. She’s TWO for god sake. She wants everything exactly her way. No, Daddy, change diaper! She insists I sit on the ‘touch’ right this minute so she can comb my hair with a coaster NOW. Sit! Mommy Sit!

Sometimes her demands are reasonable. Yes, you can have more gogurt (yogurt) or a boo (blue) poon (spoon). But, no, you can’t cross the street by yourself. You must hold my hand in the parking lot. And there are others… While I was sitting in the sun, on vacation, thinking about this, I could not come up with any of them. The humming of the honey bees devouring the nectar of little rosemary flowers was too distracting. While she’s snoring in the other room, all her requests seem perfectly reasonable. I wasn’t in my usual frame of mind.

Rosy cheeks, no warts!
Play games, all sorts

Hmmm, play games. I do sometimes trick her into doing what I want, but I don’t think this is the kind of games the kids mean. Perhaps I’m reading too much into this. I think Mary Poppins is becoming one of my primary sources of parenting advice (or parenting guilt). Move over Parenting with Love and Logic. I’ve had enough rational thinking, I’m all about flying umbrellas and jumping into chalk drawings from here on out.   

Never be cross or cruel
Never give us castor oil or gruel

Sometimes I can’t help but be cross but I will do my best to never be cruel. I guess cleverness is the goal, distraction the aspiration, persuasion the dream, but when all else fails, as I said before, I reserve the right to bring out the angry. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to go scream at my umbrella until it learns to fly.