Would You Rather…The Toddler Version

My kids have a card game called “Would You Rather”.

The premise is that you have to choose between two pretty ridiculous things.

For example: Would you rather wear a tuxedo to school/work every day…or clothes three sizes too small?

Would you rather post all your report cards on Facebook…or all your love letters?

Would you rather be able to camouflage yourself like a chameleon…or puff up your body like a blowfish?

They love it.

Because they haven’t lived long enough.

So tell me, parents in the toddler trenches…would you rather…

“Sleep in” till 6am while your kid gets the butter out of the fridge and butters the entire kitchen and himself…or fall asleep at lunchtime and forget to pick up your kindergartner from school?

Pretend the toddler is still taking his nap so you can finish the chapter of the book you’re reading…or walk in before he decides to finger paint the walls around the crib with the contents of his diaper?

Force your kids to swallow “chew forever steak”…or look the other way so they can spit it into their napkins?

Eat a nice dinner of fettucini alfredo with roasted chicken and a side of acorn squash….or make spaghetti for the ten zillionth time in a row because that is all the kids will eat?

Potty train ‘early’, cleaning the floor, doing the laundry and tolerating six months of ‘relapses’…or wait until the summer they turn three and turn them loose buck naked in the backyard with a never-ending sippy cup and a potty chair?

See the inside of every bathroom in your community, suspending the tot above the sleaze…or keep a permanent line item in your budget labelled: “diapers and wipes”?

Step on Legos, Jacks, and Slinkys in the middle of the night while running into the kids’ bedroom…or let them throw up over it all and toss it out the next morning as “collateral damage”?

Let the flotsam of a year’s worth of meals build up to the point where you can no longer tell what color your high chair is…or put a pile of Cheerios in the middle of the floor and let the kid have at it?

Give them a pacifier that they drop out of the crib every single night at 2am and shriek madly…or let them suck their thumb until they’re 20?

Spend 15 minutes strapping your baby to your chest and your toddler to your waist while making a two minute stop to pick up your kindergartner…or spend a half hour waiting for Hubby to show up with a spare car key because the kindergartner climbed in and accidentally locked the car from the inside and is attempting to drive away?

Give your little one a pet fish that refuses to die (unless, of course, you pet and cuddle it)…or give her a hamster that refuses to live (and especially loathes petting and cuddling)?

Have the child who hates swim lessons and refuses to get into the water…or have the child who loves swim lessons and refuses to surface from below the water?

These are important choices to ponder, and I think I speak for us all when I say, “To Toddle or not to Toddle…that is the question.”

I’ll be making different versions of this game, as I find it rather cathartic.

And when you’re standing in the kitchen and have to choose between washing the dishes or drinking your bevmo from a sippy cup…well, we all know the answer to that one.