It's that thing when

I'm very well schooled in feeling inadequate as a parent, but just in case you aren't, I'm going to define it for you. It's that thing when...

...When your daughter has a day off daycare and you have to take her to school by yourself. Having no idea what time Kindergarten actually starts at, and being unwilling to phone the school and ask "What time does school start?" midway through the school year, you arrive at twelve forty five, hoping for the best. You stand around for fifteen minutes. You feel relieved when other parents start trickling in, but then discover that they are part of some exclusive Kindergarten Club, and they huddle around each other discussing their kids various allergies and recipes for no nut banana nut loaf. (And I mean, honestly, I don't even know why you would need a recipe. JUST LEAVE THE NUTS OUT. Take whatever recipe you have and scratch out the part that says 'add 1/4 cup of walnuts' or whatever. Or don't even scratch it out if you don't want to. Just make a mental note of it.) But I think I was just feeling annoyed, because my kids don't even have any allergies, so I felt totally cheated. Like, what is wrong with them? Don't they know that I'd fit in better with the other parents if they could be allergic to something. Is it too much to ask. Anyways, I stood back, unsure at times whether I was in or out of the conversation. I nodded and chuckled at one parents comments.
Apparently I was out.
You know. It's that thing.

...When you take your toddler to your older child's ball game and a parent tells you that "no kid under 18 should drink black pop" when you let him take a sip of your Diet Coke. Apparently, she tells me, from her experience as a clerk on a dialysis unit, black pop causes renal failure. I wanted to tell her "well from my experience, as a NURSE, I see a lot of people DROP DEAD from being a FREAKING WHALE, lady. Which isn't entirely true because I haven't seen anyone drop dead, per se. But that doesn't mean there's not a correlation there. But I didn't say anything, because I try not to use my nursing powers for evil. I just smiled and nodded and thanked her for her information. I thought after that it would have been effective to tell her that I considered the remark to be racist and therefor offensive. Because you can always win any disagreement by saying that. They will pretty much apologize to you, NO MATTER WHAT.
Anyways, who cares, because you could see quite clearly that my kids were perfectly healthy. Alex was sitting there eating his carrot sticks and drinking his water.
And by carrot sticks I mean Cheezies.
And by water I mean banana Slushie.
Ya. It's that thing.

....When you go to Wal Mart to buy a side rail for your babies toddler bed and then find out that they cost SIXTY fricking dollars. I try to remember something, ANYTHING, from my high school physics class. Force times velocity times something something. What I'm trying to discern is "how bad, exactly, could he get hurt if he fell?" Cuz, see, the beds only about a foot from the ground, and the carpet is a deep pile. Plus we usually have some blankets and/or clothes on the floor. So even though I'm not very good at Physics, and I couldn't produce the exact formula that I used to arrive at my conclusion, I conclude that, in the scheme of things, he really couldn't get hurt that bad.
And so ya. It's that thing as well, as you lead your kid away and buy him a Popsicle instead.