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Monday, March 2, 2015

How to Be Humbled

Children were invented to keep adults humble, I am certain.

A few years ago I was waiting for the timer to go off so I could rinse the dye out of my hair. My oldest son was about 6 at the time and he asked me what I was doing. I showed him the picture on the box and said, "My hair is going got look like that when I'm done," pointing to the nice lady with chestnut colored hair. 25 minutes later when I had rinsed and dried my hair I went and found my boy to show him the finished result.

"See, it's all done,"  I said. He didn't seem convinced.

"What?"  I asked.

"You just don't look anything like the lady on the box," he replied. I think I heard disappointment in his tone.

Another time I had gone to the dentist to have a crown put on my tooth. Before leaving I said "The dentist is going to fix my teeth!"  I wanted my kids to feel that the dentist was a good person, not someone to be feared.

Upon arriving home my kids asked me to smile, so I did.

"The dentist didn't fix your teeth." my son surmised (yes, the same son).  "They're still yellow."

Geesh. Glad I wasn't having a low self-esteem day.

I did start drinking my coffee with a straw, though.

As your kids gets older the comments get less filtered.

"When the sun shines on you like that you can really see your mustache."

"Are you going out in that?"

"I think tank tops are meant for athletes, mom."

"Your butt isn't big, there's just a lot of it."

"Have your eyebrows always grown together like that?"

"I love how squishy you are."

I think it's God's plan to have children be as unfiltered as possible so that by the time they are teenagers you are so thick skinned that everything your kids say literally bounces off of you. You really become rubber and not just because of the aging process.

Kids can even help you embrace your shortcomings and learn to make them a special part of being you. My 5 year old is obsessed with the crown I have on one of my molars because it's gold. Every time he draws a picture of me he colors a big gold spot near my mouth, and says, "Look, there's your golden crown, my princess."

See the spot of gold on my cheek? That's my crown.




2 comments:

  1. My grandson told me recently that he just LOVES my flab.....but what a hug it was!!!!

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    1. right? If our husbands EVER said some of the things are kids/grandkids do they'd be in the dog house. But when the kiddos say it is from a place of such sincerity. :)

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