How I avoided tardiness with bad parenting

Remember when I showed you my pantry and you were totally horrified?  Well, today, I have eight huge bags and several boxes set out on my porch for a local special needs children’s foundation.  They’re filled with awesome goodies – stuffed animals, toys, clothes, and even a few appliances and electronics.  Because Tucker is such a hoarder, a lot of the toys – and ALL of the stuffed animals – are basically unused.  Whoever said that giving feels good was spot-on.  Not only did I feel giddy-good, tiny areas of my house actually look less cluttered.  Win-win, people.

That’s to say that I DID feel good about it until those damn boxes made me be a bad parent this morning.  Tucker and I walked out onto the front porch to go to school and he saw the boxes.  Bad idea, Mommy.  NEVER leave boxes on the front porch.  Ever.  Why?  Because Tucker thinks they’re presents. For him.  In his defense, all of our family and close friends live elsewhere.  Which means that he gets enough packages delivered to him to recognize a box on the front porch when he sees one.  And think “presents!”

So instead of our usual trip to the car this morning, which would consist of saying hello to the truck up the street, pointing to the birds we hear singing in the trees and trying to find a ninee up in the sky, we had this:

See how he’s not just quivering but vibrating with excitement?  Presents really are that cool.

Then Mommy got to be the bad guy.  I hate it when my kid thinks I suck.

Being the bad guy led to this.

And then, this.

See how SLUMPED he is?  Breaks my heart.

Bloody well great.  At this point, we were almost guaranteed to be late.  Luckily, brilliance struck me and I then rocked my bad parenting skills, grabbed a gift bag, and stuck Tucker’s little red garbage truck in it.  Ta-da!  A present!

He recovered pretty quickly.  I didn’t even have to buy anything new.  Ok whatever, so maybe I could have used that two minutes to attempt to teach Tucker an important life-lesson.  But the fact is, he wouldn’t have been able to absorb my wise words through his confused tears.  He was happy, I was relieved and we weren’t even late for school.  Bad parenting?  Perhaps.  But I’m ok with that.