This Is Why We Can’t Have Nice Things
15 reasons why buying decent items with children is tantamount to lighting money on fire
When you order up the perfect coffee table to complement the new rug, the child waits approximately 24 hours before deciding it needs a nice scribble design on the top.
The charging port of your phone is the perfect place to jam cinnamon roll icing.
Because the smoothie fell over. In the car. Onto the new Nintendo Switch.
Three words. Cloth chairs. Don’t. (Until the child is at least thirty years old.)
If you renovate your spouse’s office, complete with a fresh paint job, your four year old will find the hidden black permanent sharpies and pen his full name on the white door.
None of the couch pillows are on the couch. None of them. Ever. So don’t purchase nice ones that are extremely difficult to clean.
The Christmas nativity scene your mother-in-law gifted you now includes a beheaded Joseph.
The first Christmas snow globe you bought your child that you dreamt of winding up every evening at bedtime in the month of December made it two nights. Two nights.
If you forgot to tell your kids one of those important “key” lessons in life (listen to our talk on Jingles and Milky Ways - minute 23ish) you may end up with the tiresome joke “your mom” keyed into the side of your SUV with a ball pump needle. Happened to a friend, not you.
Where else would a toddler want to smash their giggly face full of yogurt off but your couch after they take off from your attempts to wipe? Again, we advise against cloth here.
Buy a new beautiful wooden table from Costco.com and enjoy the lovely, spotless finish for a day before non washable paint is used atop it. This may have actually been your own fault. Now refer to the paint-stricken dining table as “artsy” to people that brave your home.
Because you allow the children to nosh in the car. This was your own fault, again. Will you ever learn?
It is quite humorous how children’s stickers are crafted with an adhesive that commits them for eternity to your wall trim, nursery furniture, bunk bed posts, and car windows.
Against your better judgment, you buy yourself a beautiful white stone dining room table. You convene a family meeting to lay some ground rules and preempt any disasters. The first week of it being in the house, you come home to a scene that is so horrific, it can’t be relived.
Because even after you instruct all birthday party participants as to the appropriate areas to enjoy their colorful cupcakes (basically anywhere but your spotless and whitish rug), your nephew will subsequently pressure pop-open a bag of nacho cheese Doritos atop said rug.
The point being, no, you cannot have nice things. Not at this juncture of life. Not during this season or stage or setting. You’ve come to an awareness about this and have settled into “decent enough” as you continue to raise your family in a home that is warm. A home that welcomes friends and has food stuck in crevices. A home that neighborhood children run into. The place where you collapse next to your person at the end of the day sharing stories about the remarkable statement your eldest child made or the latest word your toddler just learned and how they used it. A place where pillows are on the ground and cups are left on the table and clothes are haphazardly “put away” by the children. A place lacking in cold perfection for the ‘gram and no shiny marble that would do the Biltmore proud but spilling over the edges with dynamic laughter and un-challengeable in the richness of your memories.
Now that we think about it, aren’t you so grateful you can’t have nice things?
Funny but true!😂
Reason #152365789241820 why I never had kids. BWAHA.