Parenting

You know when you are a brand new parent of your first child, you do everything as "right" as possible.  You wash the binkies when they fall on the floor.  You water down juice.  You avoid all sugary foods for the first 364 days of their life.  (But they get a lovely, sugar-filled cupcake with frosting for their 1st birthday.)  Your child is full clothed with onsie, shirt, pants, coat, socks, boots, hat and gloves when you go out during the winter.  And an extra blanket.  You latch the car seat in the middle of the backseat because the all-knowing safety people say that's the safest spot in the car.

So tonight we went caroling with 3 other families, plus one of the family's mother and father-in-law.  We had the most and oldest kids out of the bunch.  Our kids were the ones who take off their boots and socks, so we just threw the boots back on and left the socks (Annie and Maddie).  No one had gloves on.

Once we loaded all our kids into the van, and we were waiting on others to finish up, we were reminiscing about having fewer children and all of those "right" things we used to do.  That's when Ryan realized that we have 4 children, all in different seats in the minivan and not one of them was in that "safe" spot in the backseat.  Not one.

Whoops.

But then, who would get to sit there?  Our favorite child?  How do you choose that?  I mean, often it depends on the day.  Or the hour.  Then we'd have to shuffle the car seats around, and really, that would be a pain.

So I guess we are equal-opportunity.  They are all equally at-risk in the case of a car crash.

Good thing we have the big, heavy minivan with side curtain airbags.