Okay, it hasn’t been 84 years since I’ve written a post, but if you got that reference? You are my new favorite person. Yes, you.

In reality, it’s been just about six months.

A lot has happened in six months.

A LOT.

But that’s not what I’m here to write about. I actually started writing this post in my head when I took the boys to breakfast last week. THAT is how I knew I was ready to start blogging again. [Yes, yes, I will get to why I nearly shut the entire thing down one of these days.]

Anyway. There was this one morning last week. You parents know the kind of mornings I’m talking about. For once, the kids didn’t need me to herd them to get them ready for school. They were ready in time to leave for Butter’s bus. BUT! Butter had a project due that I was not in any way, shape, or form letting him destroy on the bus, so I was taking him all the way to school. That would have made Bear late, so I was going to take him to school first.

I searched the kitchen for breakfast, & that was about the time I realized I haven’t gone grocery shopping in like, two months. No really, it’s been a while. We grab staples when we need them, but our freezer is pretty well stocked & we kind of a have a plethora of veggies sometimes from the restaurant [OH LOOK AT THAT OTHER BLOG POST THAT NEEDS WRITTEN!], so. Basically, I didn’t even have two pieces of extra bread to rub together for toast.

Okay, boys, go get in the car. We’re going out for a Mommy/Boy breakfast date. Who cares if it was to McDonald’s? They loved spending the extra time with me, I’m sure.

This post started writing itself in my head about the time I told the boys to go find us a seat while I waited to collect our food. There was an older gentleman there who looked HORRIFIED that I was letting my children search for a seat without hovering over them. AND THEN! I let them climb up on stools! I am clearly The Worst Mother in the Entire Universe ™.

Seriously, this guy judged me the entire time we were there. AND HE DIDN’T EVEN DO IT SUBTLY.  He blatantly stared at me, glared at me, & gave me these terribly judging looks.

Had the children not been with me, I probably would have laid in to him.

What I would have liked to say to him is that no, I am not a perfect mother. I’m teaching my kids independence by telling them to go find a seat. It’s not like the McDonald’s was so huge I was going to lose sight of them. So what if they climbed on the stools? I’m not a litigious  person. I wouldn’t have sued McDonald’s if one of my children had fallen because of some stupid thing he was doing. Did I freak out that they were climbing? A little, yeah. But that’s because they weren’t climbing over carpet. I’ve seen my five year old scale a stool that – incidentally – is not attached to a table & meditate on it. He’s part monkey; he’s got this.

I know this is probably going to catch me a lot of flack, but there’s a generation of people who hate the way mine is raising our children. They call our kids entitled brats, screen zombies, & worse. They call us helicopter parents who refuse to let our kids get a bad grade because of the kid’s screw ups. News flash: I am not one of those parents. If my kid gets a bad grade, I’m the parent in the first strip of this comic. That’s not to say that I don’t go to bat for my kids when I think that something is wrong with what’s going on in their school [oh look, another blog post!].

I’ve always said that not only was I born in the wrong generation, but I’m parenting in the wrong generation. If my kids get hurt while they’re playing outside, that’s okay. If they’re not bleeding, I generally tell them to go back outside. I tell them all the time to GO OUT & PLAY. GO PLAY OUTSIDE. GOOOOO PLAYYYYYY.

I bet that guy was really offended when I let the seven year old go into the men’s [single person] bathroom alone.