Memories should be doody-free.

Sometimes kids are sweet.

“Can I sleep with you tonight, Mommy?

I want to snuggle you.”

Aw, how adorable, right? I will admit it – I usually say yes. Not all the time, not every week.

But the snuggling does happen.

I just can’t always say NO to that cute-ness.

Any year now she is going to take away all the snuggles, all the smooches, all the hand-holding, skipping, and dancing. Any year now she will leave me with nothing but a surly beeyotch of a teenage girl. Any year now I’ll have only memories of my sweet baby-kins.

Till then, I’ll take what I can get.

Alternatively, sometimes kids are freaking little a-holes.

“Mommy, remember that time you fell all the way down the stairs and peed your pants?”

Ha! Boy, do I! What a funny time THAT was, huh? …

… I might say something along those lines, but what I’m actually thinking is more to the tune of,

“Can’t remember to brush your hair on a daily basis, but sure as shit you’ll remember that Mommy peed her pants till the day you die, you bratty little so-n-so.”

Worse is when she wants to regale visitors with this story. I kind of want to blow my brains out when that happens. Till I remember that the visitor in question has probably peed his or her pants once or twice and can’t really afford to be all judge-y at me.

Still. That first cringe is a good one.

My kids both have the memory of an elephant.

The boy can remember back to when he was four and I left his brand-stinking-new Buzz Lightyear sneakers on top of the car as I buckled him into his booster seat. I drove off without retrieving them and of course they scattered all to hell.

And you always wondered how those shoes got there on the side of the highway?

{And before anyone asks, the reason he didn’t already have his shoes *ON* is because we had just left some kid’s birthday party at the McD’s Playland, where they aren’t supposed to wear shoes, and rather than struggle to get them back onto his stinky feet, I thought I’d save the trouble by carrying him out and putting them on in the car, which obviously worked out really well.}

He also remembers when, around the same age, he fell off my lap, banged his head on the metal backing of the chair, and then proceeded to smack his face on the ground, thereby sending me into a heart attack as I worried over the damage to his baby teeth. My son’s smile is gorgeous, and he never had braces, so I guess it all worked out. *whew*

He is almost twenty now. Shouldn’t he have forgotten this stuff by now?

My daughter can remember falling out of bed and breaking her collarbone back when she was three. The fact that she charmed the entire hospital in the middle of the night might have something to do with it. She was eager to tell every doctor, nurse, or patient what happened.

She also remembers the time I lovely held a frog and it peed in my hand. I gotta say, that stupid frog really hurt my feelings, because I was trying to save him from getting run over, and was eagerly showing him off to my kids when he decided to go all pissy on me. Frog was a total jerk.

Reminds me of the time I tried, in my childhood, to save a ground hog from some abusive bad boys who were throwing a bouncy-ball at it; that little twerp bit straight through my finger and I had to get a rabies shot. Some animals are such ungrateful little a-holes.

So here is my question:

Why do kids’ memories have to be so jacked up? Why can’t kids remember all the fun times? All the sweet things we have done for them?

All those moments when, butt cheeks encrusted with doo-doo, we wiped them clean?

Seriously. Where are all the memories of candy and cupcakes and studying for science tests into the wee hours of the night?

Hey, kid — remember those years when you used to wear a diaper, like, ALL THE TIME? That was so funny! What a lark, eh?

Oh, and how about when you scraped your knees all bloody and I disinfected the wound so it wouldn’t get all crusty? Good times, yeah?

I love thinking back to when you needed help wiping your booty because the poop was stuck in your butt. That was, like, totally awesome!

Oh, the memories!

What really sucks is that my daughter will be hitting puberty sometime in the next five years or so.

So I’ll be helping her learn the ropes with regard to menstruation and genital hygiene.

Which is fine, insofar as that sort of thing goes.

But do you think she’ll be like,

“Mommy, remember that time when you explained to me that feminine napkins are meant to stick to your panties and not to your hair and skin?

 

Or that other time when you taught me which end of the tampon to insert?

 

That was HILARIOUS! Love those memories!”

Nope. She won’t be remembering those historical moments.

It’ll be all about the time we ran out of toilet paper, while I was on the potty, of course, and she heard me pleading for help, and ran out back and enthusiastically yelled across the neighborhood, “Jesse, Mom needs more Cottonelle so you can wipe her butt!”

Ah, sweet memories.

Gotta love ‘em.