edited to add

A couple of things.

First of all. Hailey made a point that feeding your kid organic and stuff doesn't make someone a bad parent. And I completely agree with her. When Cass was a baby, I made all her fruits and veggies myself from food I bought at farmers markets. And my kids didn't touch a french fry until well after their third birthdays, don't drink soda or apple juice, aren't allowed to have caffeine, and have fruit and veggies with every meal.

My point (and she did say that this is what she thought I was saying) (wow. that was confusing)...

Anyway. My point is that I'm all about some healthy eating. I'm super picky about the overall food quality for my kiddos, although a stray potato chip here and there doesn't send me into a tizzy.

I was mostly talking about the self-righteous prigs who act like it makes them better parents to feed their kids organic stuff and put them in organic onesies and believe that if you don't cloth diaper, you don't love your kids enough. And boy, there are a lot of those prigs out there. They rub me wrong. Its definitely not about the organic/inorganic food debate. I think cloth diapers are awesome if that's the route you want to go. It's about thinking that one or the other is RIGHT.

In my opinion, organic oranges and bananas are stupid. THEY HAVE PEELS. Organic pop tarts still have as much sugar and fat as the non-organic ones. And organic onesies? I'm sorry. But that's just the dumbest thing I've ever heard of. (See? Told you I should get started on this topic. I can't stop.)

Another thing. Heather mentioned that parenting being difficult relates to being terrified that she's going to screw up her kids.

Yeah. I totally have that thought run through my head dozens of times a day. Because it would be really, really easy to screw them up. I didn't mean at all that parenting isn't scary. It is. I really was just using the word "hard" in relevance to the idea that its difficulty causes an inability to parent well.

I hope that sentence made sense. It sounded much better in my head than on 'paper'.

And Erin. I was a teacher too. And oh Lord, the kids I'd have come into my classroom. You could totally tell the parents who were lazy. Because their kids were total buttheads, and it took me months to get them in line.

She also wanted to know what prompted this post.

Well. I was in Target. With all three kids, which I don't normally do. Normally I take the two kids while Cass is in school, but I needed formula. So. It was after school, close to dinnertime, and the kiddos were tired from a fiasco the night before with Chris and a car. (That's a story in itself. Which I will tell another day. SO ridiculous.)

Cass and Gabe were acting up. Being loud, and obnoxious, and annoying. And I was on them. A lot. Not yelling, but being my normal mean-ass self, not putting up with anything. I'm wearing the baby, ripping my kids a new one because they were being buttheads, and in line next to me is a lady with a few kids herself. And her kids were gross. Dirty, and rumpled with food on their faces. They were screaming and whining and being awful.

And she looked great. Nice clothes, bag. Nails done. Cute shoes.

Her kids were being total hellions, and she stood there in line, and did nothing. Her cart was filled with crap food. And one of the kids asked for candy. She said "no", yet the second the kid started whining, she rolled her eyes, and said "okay, honey, pick one". And then all the other kids started doing the same thing.

It was heinous to watch. Completely appalling.

The thing is. My kids were being just as awful. BUT. I was doing something.

And she wasn't. And she looked over at me, and smiled, and said (with that parent eye-roll empathy thing) "It's just so hard, isn't it? I just have to pick my battles."

Pick your battles? Woman, you lost the war already. You laid down your weapons, cried defeat, and let the enemy take over.

Bad parenting. No parenting, actually, which in my opinion is the same thing.

That's what prompted this post.