judge not, lest...

Before I had kids, I was very free to make judgments about other people's children and their parenting style.

"I'd never do that."

"Why can't those parents control their child(ren)?"

"They must be doing something wrong for their kid to act like that."

"My kid will just have to go with the flow and sleep when they can."

Well, this arrogance was exorcised in the first 4 months of Benjamin's life when I realized (1) babies are going to do what they want to do and have their own personalities and opinions and (2) there are times when you just need to do anything to survive.

One of the things that I never thought I'd do was buy a DVD system for our car. Before we had kids, I would see cars drive by on the highway with cartoons playing on their DVD players and think "Geez people, can't you turn off the tv even when you're driving? Go ahead and anesthetize your kids with tv all day long." Do you know where this judgment gets you? Standing outside of Target at 5:30 am on Black Friday in sub-freezing weather waiting for the doors to open at 6 am at which time you will rush in with the masses to get your hot little hands on a dual screen portable DVD player.

Now, our family lives at least 4+ hours away and we have 3 different families to visit due to my parent's divorce. During the holidays, its especially draining, as we are traveling at least 3 times in about a month time span. We're hoping that the DVD player will help them to relax and not fuss as much in the car (Caroline especially). We used it for the first time when we took a 6 hour (one way in good weather with limited stops -- has taken us up to 8 hours) trip this past weekend. We don't want to leave it on the entire time we were gone, but it did come in handy when the kids started to get fussy.

My biggest failing is my tendency towards judgmentalism. God is beating this fault out of me through my children, though I still cling to it stubbornly...