The Cleanse: Week 8 - Goodbye Hello Kitty

Despite my best efforts to keep at least one square foot of toy-free space in our house, there seems to be a constant influx of new toys coming from somewhere. We've tried to emphasize to Skye on multiple occasions how fortunate she is to have so many fun toys to play with; that there are many little kids who don't have any. She seemed to sort of understand, so I decided to take it to the next level. I asked Skye if she'd like to give some of her toys away to kids who don't have any. To my surprise she was immediately enthusiastic about the idea and before the excitement wore off we quickly sorted through a large assortment of toys and set aside a pile designated for D.I. 

As the only male in the house I'm fighting a losing battle with 3 girls (5 if you count the dogs), to eliminate some of the PINK that has threatened to make our house look something like this:

 

and keeping Skye & Lucy's rooms from creeping ever closer to this:

So I made sure to include in the donation pile a Hello Kitty lego dollhouse thingy (accessories included) 

It was a few days before Skye and I made the trip to deliver the donated toys and as we approached the drop-off I worried that she would have second thoughts and cause a scene. All went well until we began driving away and I realized Skye's misunderstanding of the permanence of the donation process when I said:

"That was so nice of you to give your toys to some kids who don't have any," and her reply was, "Yah, but they'll give 'em right back, huh?"

Speaking of awkward parenting moments, isn't it funny how you don't understand the full hypocrisy of parenthood until you become one?

My favorite example of this occurred a few months ago when Skye was given a popsicle and instructed that she could only eat it at the table so as to avoid a spill on the living room furniture. She naturally threw a fit. When her mom gave the ultimatum that she either eat her treat at the table or Mom would take it away and eat it herself, surprisingly Skye chose option B and willingly handed her popsicle over to Mom. Breck then proceeded to eat the frozen treat while sitting on the couch.

Skye immediately noticed the injustice and pointed it out. I sat by witnessing the whole ordeal and laughed hysterically as Breck begrudgingly moved over to sit at the table.

My own personal threat at being outed as a hypocrite came when we recently purchased Skye a bucket seat to ride on the back of Breck's bike. Of course as responsible parents we bought Skye a helmet and enthusiastically encouraged her to wear it.

When I first started riding my bike about 5 years ago I bought a helmet and proceeded to wear it 2 times before allowing it to collect dust in the garage. I'm commuting to work riding around in slacks and dress shoes; Lance Armstrong I am not. Why do I need a helmet? Plus it was uncomfortable ("...not as uncomfortable as having a brain injury" Breck points out), so I never wore it.

Anticipating a potential issue, I bought myself a new, more comfortable, helmet at the same time I bought Skye's knowing it would be easier to encourage her to where one if Daddy wore one too.

It worked (even though mine is black and hers is...wait for it...PINK)

So I had an extra, dusty but barely used, helmet sitting in my garage that made the trip to the D.I. along with Skye's toy donations.

Wearing a helmet is not as bad as I thought after-all. At least I don't have to worry about helmet hair ;)