The Lead Crutch

So all this talk of lead paint and toy recalls brought back this memory:

When Kate and Joan were in the thick of the terrible 3's (worse than 2's by far), their behavior became so awful that David and I did not know what to do. We were working our little parenting hearts out, trying to be patient, kind, good parents, only to be met with rudeness, screaming, flailing, and gnashing of teeth.

My parenting libido was sagging badly. I often looked at these children with complete awe. Who were these monsters? How is it possible that these screeching banshees were MY children. The icing on the cake was when I watched a home movie of them at age 2. They were so cute and sweet and pink cheeked. It felt like a punch in the gut- seeing how those cherub hairless two-year-olds had transformed. (Into nearly-as-hairless and not at all sweet or pink cheeked three-year-olds.)

See? Hairless. Not even enough for a barrette.

This is when I came up with my new theory: My kids must have lead poisoning. Yep. Had to be. After all, we had just moved to a new (old) house. We knew that certainly, at some point in its lifetime, lead paint was used. So that was that. My kids were the way they were (read: more disturbingly screamy than one can imagine) because of LEAD, not because of my parenting.

So as it turns out, brattiness is not a symptom of lead poisoning. Har, har, har. Rookie mistake. (Why then, last night when Marin refused to sleep: fussed, tossed, turned, and used her head as a cranial wrecking ball, did I contemplate it- maybe she can't sleep because she has lead poisoning...) (But hey, silver lining- when we go to SD on Friday her sleeping schedule won't get messed up... because she DOESN'T HAVE ONE.)

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The spacing is still all wacky whenever I add pictures. Your advise to solve this problem the last time I asked was much to HTML-y for my... abilities. So. The spacing will continue to be screwy. (For example, there should be a space between the first 2 paragraphs- "My parenting libido..." is a new paragraph. But no. matter. what. I. do. it won't post that way. Not to mention that everything is single spaced, when I didn't even know that was an option. I give up.)

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OMG. We leave for SD on Friday, as in two days from now. But never fear, the laundry is done, the bags are packed, the paper has been stopped, and we are ready to hit the road. This is why I have PLENTY of free time for blogging.

Oh, wait. I haven't done a Single Thing to get ready to leave. That was funny though- us being all packed 2 days early. I know David will crack up, too, when he sees how much I have not yet done. So! Funny!