Picky Parents and the Child Nose Pickers

This morning, after her comment, I felt my blood heat up my face. Count to 10, Colleen, count to 10. But I knew my eyes were already in a defensive, glassy stare, as she kept explaining her reasons as to why I need to feed her son 5,000 times a day.

He's a vegetarian, they need to graze all day long with a multitude of offerings, fruits and vegetables and grains, "he's a vegetarian, you know".

Son is 22 months old and similar in age with the other kids here, which is to say, the other kids don't bring pork chops and veal cutlets for snack time either.

Son's lunch box is a large pail full of fruit, vegetables, big bags of cookies, cereal, granola bars, cheese sandwiches, juice, snack after snack that require preparation time. Not like the other kid's lunchboxes with snack and lunch meals pre-cut, pre-contained, ready to go.

I find myself trying to slice up an avocado, or a pear, determining how many mini crisps I should take from big bag.
And now I'm just plain annoyed. Son seems to be losing weight and she's concerned. Guess what, son is growing up and is getting taller, not to mention he shits 5 times a day.

Yesterday she asked that I spend more one-on-one time with son because she's been neglecting him lately by going out, and by going out I mean by "going to work". I'll just ignore the other five kids for a bit because apparently their parents are out carousing.

Count to 10, Colleen, count to 10. I blurt out, "okay", because in the back of my mind I see a brand new travel trailer payment coming up soon. And, yes, I'll make sure he doesn't get hurt by the other kids, even though your kid is the biggest bully, hair-pulling, face scratching, toy snatching kid here.

She's not as bad as one customer I use to have. Their son was 2 years old, still needed to have his milk bottled WARMED UP. As well as his water sippy-cup WARMED UP. They phoned the daycare about 3-4 times a day, usually during nap time, which woke son up, as well as the other kids.

During winter, with the drive and walk-way covered in snow and ice, father tip-toed, inch by inch, baby steps, carrying son to safety, despite drive and walk-way lathered in melt-away and salts.

They phoned once to ask if son had his snack, which I replied "no, he wasn't hungry". Then panic on the other side of the phone, "is he alright, is he fainting, is he breathing??!!!" Utter panic.
From then on I told them he ate like a pig.