Love You Forever

Does everyone know the book?

Good.

And if you don't....I don't recommend it.

via

Insert rant about this book below:

It is possible to read this book without crying. In fact the last time I read this book I was extremely annoyed by the end of it and wanted to shove it down the garbage disposal - I seriously wanted it to feel pain.

I think the book is creepy, plain and simple.

It's not that I don't get the sentiment. I really do. I'm not a cold-hearted person. I'm not a cold-hearted mother. I love my daughter, although some days I like her better than others (oh don't think you are so much better than me, all you mothers out there totally get it). I get how touching the book is supposed to come off. Kids grow up so fast - yada yada. It's hard to let them go - yeah yeah, we get it.  And somehow the only way to express the feeling of "love you forever, like you for always, as long as I'm living my baby you'll be" is through a mother driving across town in the middle of the night to use a ladder to crawl into her grown son's window to pick him up, rock him and sing him that song. Couldn't you just call him in the morning?

I'm not an expert on parenting. The most I have had to do in terms of "letting go" is putting Addison in the church nursery on Sunday mornings, so clearly no serious letting go happening here. But all I'm saying is there is a point when you just have to cut the cord. You have to give up checking on your kid when they move out of the house. I'm all for looking in on after she have gone to sleep before you go to bed, but picking her up?! That's just a recipe for disaster. What if they wake up?! You would have to be crazy! There are so many things that could go wrong here. Peek from the doorway so you don't accidentally trip over a toy which sets off a musical toy which then sets off another and then before you know there is a twelve piece band playing in your kid's room and now they are awake wanting to play and unable to fall back to sleep unless you bring them back to your bed because they have developed this fear of people creeping into their room at night and making the clapping monkey play a creepy vision of "All Around the Mulberry Bush." So now the kid is sleeping between you and your spouse, diagonal and kicking - all night long. And the sleep you so desperately wanted just isn't happening and you have no one to blame but yourself and those crazy sad thoughts and emotions about letting go and your kid moving out when really the kid is only 3 and has years to go before they leave the nest. You should have just given them a big goofy hug during breakfast the next morning.

And checking on your kid after he/she has already moved out the house in the middle of the night is also a bad idea. First of all sneaking into someone else's house through a window is called breaking and entering, just saying. Personally I'm not a fan of ladders and think the doing it in the dark might be a bad idea. And second, what if a neighbor sees you and calls the police, it is very possible that you will end up tackled to the ground and arrested. Or worse - you scare the living day lights out of your own child who thinks someone is breaking into their house and now a baseball bat is being swung at your head. Lights out to the mother!

Rob tells me I'm taking the book too literally...