Little fingers, little toes
When you decide to become a parent there are some things that you expect. You expect to have to deal with diapers and potty training and tantrums and piano lessons and carpooling and a million other things. The reality is always somewhat different from the expectation, but at least you expected it. But there are other things. Things which never occurred to you prior to actually arriving in the middle of them. Things like explaining to your disbelieving daughter that she will indeed have to deal with this unpleasant feminine cycle every single month. Things like being 8 months pregnant and chasing your naked giggling toddler down the street. Things like having a child deliberately poop on the floor on purpose to make you mad. But, of all the things I didn’t know I signed up for when I had a baby, the one that haunts me most often is nail clipping.
In the hospital you look at the tiny fingers and toes and you marvel at them. Little do you know that you will soon be forced to take blades to those cute little nails and trim them off. If you do not, those cute little nails will be sharp little claws that will rake you bloody. Babies of course object to nail trimming, so they don’t hold still. More than once I’ve accidentally drawn blood while trimming the nail from a small digit. Then the child becomes mobile and can run away when the nail clippers come out. At various points I have cajoled, bribed, pleaded, and physically restrained various children to get their nails clipped. Link objected to nail clipping so strenuously that I would sneak in and clip them while he slept.
At 12, Kiki is finally in charge of her own nails, but this is a fairly recent development. For awhile I was in charge of 20 little digits for each of my kids. If I added in my own nails, that comes to an even 100 little nails for me to trim. Each and every one of those nails had to be trimmed at least once per month. That’s a lot of nail clipping. It is particularly annoying when Link would turn nail clipping into a 40 minute emotional ordeal. He has thankfully gotten over his terror of nail clippers. Also he has figured out that if he tears the nails off, I don’t have to clip them so often. I think Gleek is nearing the end of needing me to clip her nails for her. She loves nail polish and is trying to keep her nails nice so that they look pretty. This works for awhile, but then inevitably she plays in the sandbox or climbs a tree and makes them all ragged. Then we trim them off and start over again. Patches is fairly content to let me cut his nails as long as I only clip through 90% of the nail. He likes to pull them the rest of the way off by himself. He makes a little game out of it. I’m not sure what the game is, but it involves explosions and the nails going “Aaaaaah!” as they fall from his fingers.
So let this be a warning to all potential parents out there. The diapers are done within 3 years or so, but the nail trimming lasts much longer than that.