I've become a monster.

So I brought my newborn home pretty recently (she's 3 months old now but was born premature, so she had to stay in the hospital for a while).The nights are a little rough, as with every other baby. Yesterday, at around 2AM, she cries, I get up, feed her, we snuggle a little bit, she falls asleep again, I put her back in her bed, and I begin washing her bottle before going back to sleep.My eyes drift to my left, and I see the frying pan that I didn't have time to wash after dinner because she was crying and we were busy. I smile, take the pan, wash it, and think "cool! I have a little time, I can wash my frying pan!"... Then I realised I was genuinely happy to be washing my frying pan at 2h38 in the morning. So glad everyone was asleep so I could do the dishes.... Any of you guys have similar "what have I become" stories? :D via /r/Parenting http://ift.tt/2aoXvql

Are there any older, 40+ parents of babies or toddlers on /r/parenting?

I'm an older parent myself. I'm 43, DH 42 and we have a 1 year old who we're besotted with. I don't really post on any parenting forums because I've found that they can be quite unwelcoming to older mothers in particular. I am curious to see if the community is any different in that regard. Are there any older mums or dads here? Do you ever get any judgemental or snarky comments from anyone just for being an older parent? I've found that people in real life are mostly fine about it but it's different online in a lot of places, for some reason. via /r/Parenting http://ift.tt/2aoN06w

Bi-racial child, in-laws constantly bringing up race.

I'm a caucasian male, who is married to a hispanic female, and we just had our first child (female/5mo old). My wife has dark skin, brown eyes, brown hair, etc. I am fair skinned, blue eyed, etc. To everyone's surprise, our daughter was born looking like a female clone of myself. Dirty blonde hair, blue eyes, pale white skin. Ever since our little girl was born, my in-laws have constantly brought up race and ethnicity around her. I am always hearing comments about how white she is, how little Mexican is in her, etc. If she makes a gurgling sound, it's not her learning to talk, it's her 'Learning to roll her R's for Spanish'.Maybe I'm just thin skinned, or worried over something trivial, but I don't want my child to be brought up to think that race is even the slightest bit important, that your skin color makes you any more related to one relative than another, or that race is even a relevant aspect of life.Has anyone else had experience with something like this? via /r/Parenting http://ift.tt/2aD0VCw

Weekly - Stories from the week/end - August 01, 2016

This weekly thread is meant as a place to share stories that happened to us as parents over the weekend. Share good, bad, fun, not fun, etc. Also, if you ever wonder who we are, click here to meet the mod team! via /r/Parenting http://ift.tt/2aoMK7f

Crawling baby and Labrador retriever hair EVERYWHERE

My wife and I have been at each other's throats because the baby is now crawling and my 11 year old yellow lab sheds like crazy. Anyone else had this problem? I really don't want to divorce over this, but we are fighting like cats and dogs.....ha. via /r/Parenting http://ift.tt/2aG1tJF

When will we know if our kids have caught chicken-pox?

We were at a family wedding this weekend with our children of 2.5 years and 7 months. Neither have had chicken pox and being UK there are no vaccinations for it. We were warned that another family were possibly attending with similarly aged children who had both recently had chicken pox but we're at the spotty stage so 'probably not infectious' and another little boy travelling with them of four months who hadn't had it. I wasn't worried as I thought it was unlikely they'd attend with Ill children, but no, there they were. Obviously my daughter wanted to play with the other little girl and the family seemed determined to be near us at all times for some bloody reason, so we are definitely in their proximity a lot. So, is it likely with two miserable and ill looking, spotty children and one quiet and miserable looking baby that my kids will catch it? I'm really, really annoyed tbh as my elder daughter starts nursery in September and has her settling in in a few weeks so this will severely disrupt plans if she gets chicken pox, also my 7 month old is so little. Also it'll be horrible to have two children sick at the same time. Just because they didn't want to miss a wedding. :( via /r/Parenting http://ift.tt/2aCyg0s

Fostering: Childrens mother difficult to deal with

We have been fostering two siblings, a two year old girl and a one year old boy since the middle of June. We are also fostering another two year old boy who is not related.We noticed on the evening the siblings were dropped off by the social worker that the little girl had a bad case of head lice. We called the social worker to let her know and ask if it would be ok to treat them and to check her own hair. Unfortunately as they were dropped off late on a Friday and we live rural we weren't able to get to an open pharmacy until the Monday morning. By that time we were all itching. The pharmacist took a quick look and said it was one of the worst cases she'd ever seen. Since then we have been regularly treating her every few days and changing her bedding as well as ours and all the other kids, its a bit of a mission but we are getting there.The little boy would scream every time he ate the first week so we took him to the doctors who diagnosed a severe case of tonsilitis, on top of that by the end of the first week at daycare all three of them came down with a cold and gave it to us, so we were off work for the next week. We asked their social worker if she still wanted them to come for access and she said no keep them at home so they missed access for that week.They were having regular supervised access with their social worker present at an Agency location Mondays and Friday afternoons up until a couple of weeks ago. The first access visit we went to pick them up at the agency location where they have supervised access rooms. When we walked in they were just waiting in the main reception with the kids and the social worker came over and said the mother wanted to meet us was that ok. We didn't actually get an option to say no as she was standing right next to us. The first thing she said to us was 'Oh how do you get them to sleep, they never sleep for me?'.Every time we would pick them up after that, the mother would pointedly accuse us of not doing something for the kids ie 'They are always hungry when they come so we fed them a packet of chocolate biscuits and a pie'. This is at 4pm on a Friday and the kids by that time have had a full breakfast, morning tea, lunch and afternoon tea.. She also mentioned a couple of times 'She always has cooties in her hair, she never used to'.Their access stopped two weeks ago because their social worker handed in her notice and no one from the agency was scheduled to take over the supervision and they didn't have the details of it recorded anywhere.We tried contacting the old social workers supervisor during this period but she had gone on leave for two weeks. Today we were finally contacted by their new social worker who thankfully is a good one as we've had her for other children in the past. She wanted to know everything that had happened as there were no details in their system about previous access. I am not joking. Anyway turns out the mother had been complaining to the childrens lawyer that her girl had nits and didn't have them when she went into care and that they were always sick with us and always missing access and weren't being fed! The lawyer wanted answers as the mother was accusing us of neglect!Thankfully I kept a record of the emails and texts I sent notifying the social worker of the nits and tonsilitis. Their daycare is vouching for the fact they always have the best lunches and always eat heaps at the centre provided morning and afternoon tea spread. The kids themselves are slowly learning not to stuff their faces when they see food, which I've learnt from previous foster kids is quite common when they've been in situations where they don't know where their next meal is. No surprises when their Mum brings junk food to access they stuff their faces! She doesn't have to deal with toddler tantrums because they don't want to eat their dinner and then wake up in the night after they have a sugar crash because of the crap she's fed them. The old social worker did mention that the mother was leaving them with extended family while she went out drinking/drugging for weeks on end and the father was regularly beating her up in front of the kids. It was one of the family members that dobbed her in.The access is being changed to earlier in the day now which means the kids will be picked up and dropped off back at daycare by the social worker. It means that we won't have to deal with their mother anymore but we are a little frustrated with the system in putting us in this position. The mother is very young, late teens and to her we probably just seem like the assholes who stole her babies.Its one of the most unfair things about being a foster parent. via /r/Parenting http://ift.tt/2aoj6z7