Five on Friday: If You Like . . . Then You Should Have Kids

There are a lot of those "If you like . . . then you should have kids" memes out there but, like with most parenting memes I see, they really pertain to having young children. (In this case most commonly jokes about the number of times you're woken up over night or how you followed a toddler's instructions for sandwich cutting only to be told you did it incorrectly.)

Those are, of course, valid warnings but they completely ignore what happens after the "taking their diaper off in their crib" and "drawing all over their baby sister" phases. So today, I'd like to present the perspective from parenting older kids for today's list. 

1. If you like . . . not being followed back on Instagram by a human you literally created with your own body . . . you should have kids.

2. If you like . . . usually not getting change back at all but when you do it looks like this:

 . . . you should have kids.

3. If you like . . . being expected to know where someone else's  shoes, favorite sweatshirt, phone, homework and jacket are at any given time but most particularly when you can literally see the bus pulling up to the house . . . you should have kids.

4. If you like . . . making a meal that you feel proud of that looks and smells divine and you can't wait to sit down and share with your family, only to be asked "Do I have to eat this?" and/or "Can I put ketchup on this?" . . .  you should have kids.

Lastly, and I cannot stress enough how much you should take scenarios like this one into consideration:

5. If you like driving your kid to school at 6 am on a Saturday morning when its 18 degrees out only to have him call you an hour later to say there’s no bus (even though you SAW a bus when you dropped him off--UGH, that was for wrestling, Mom!) and have him ask  “Can we use the van to get to Staten Island?” and you have to get the dog to her rabies shot and then to work and so you have to wake your peacefully sleeping husband who says what? oh my god, fine but we didn’t clean the snow off the van yesterday and you remind him that also the two back seats are currently removed and will have to be put back in and so your husband gets up and throws on some clothes to go clean the snow off the van while you get ready for work and try to figure out what the other kids will do now that your husband is apparently going to be spending a good portion of the day driving fourteen teenage boys to an indoor track meet (and back?!) and then he comes in to say he's ready for help getting the seats back in and then you get another text from your kid that says "actually never mind"

 . . .  you should have kids.