-Me and Meg
www.meandmeg.com

Hey lil-sugar readers.  I don’t know if you remember but when we first met I described to you how the Manny (our younger brother, male nanny) and I were attempting to reboot my sister, Leigh.  She was way off track as a mother and we thought it was our duty to help her get back on the path.  Well, it pains me to say we failed. 

The Manny and I have worked very hard with Leigh, we spent November introducing new concepts to her - like putting dirty diapers in the proper receptacles; wiping down high-chairs before the food hardens to a point that it becomes part of the chair.  These systems appeared easy enough for her to handle.  So over the holiday we tried more complex scenarios.  For instance, we attempted to have Leigh follow her fifteen-month-old when she left a room, to alleviate a lot of the frantic searching that goes on.  That proved too difficult; actually it was impossible for her.  More and more, the Manny and I were met by roadblocks; Leigh just could not conquer and move past some "basic" parenting strategies.  In the end, she has failed her rebooting.  While the Manny and I are disappointed, we are not all that surprised and have washed our hands of her.   

We decided all we can hope for is that the kids make it out okay.  As I type this her one daughter is sitting on a stool banging her head against the wall and another is kicking Leigh on the ground.  I know I speak for the Manny when I say we wish things would have had more of a happy ending - but this is the real world.  If there was standardized testing people had to pass prior to becoming parents, Leigh would have failed and never would have been allowed to reproduce.

Just now my sister (who is thirty-five-years-old) asked me to feel her toes in her new running shoes and tell her if they fit. What am I suppose to do with this? You see why we weren’t expecting much.

Cheers.

M.