Reason #275 I Suck at Being a Single Parent

The other night Kennedy and Kohen were playing on the floor when Kennedy picked up a stick and said some phrase about how it was smoking. I honed right in on that and after asking a couple of questions realized she was in fact talking about smoking. This was my first opportunity to teach her about smoking/drugs and as I realized this my heart started pounding and the pressure was mounting as the seconds ticked by and I wished her dad was home so he could explain it perfectly like he always does- but instead the spotlight was on me…say the wrong thing and she may become preoccupied with smoking and have a subconscious desire to do it…don’t say enough and she may naively want to do it. The time had come. I had to say something. I opened my mouth and all of my sage words of wisdom and concern scattered to the far reaches of the desert that was my brain. So in a panic I gathered up the only 4 words I could find, put them in order and shoved them out of my mouth, “CIGARETTES WILL KILL YOU!” In the ensuing silence Kenna’s eyes got real big and I realized the magnitude of what I had just said to my poor 5 year old and back pedaled as quickly as I could. I did a little better on my second try but my first statement resulted in several difficult follow up questions. I think I got the buggy a bit ahead of the horse on this one. I bet a simple, “Cigarettes are yucky” would have sufficed for now *sigh*. Kennedy must have gotten some serious cosmic kudos for being willing to come down here and let me be her mom…at least she has Nathan as her dad…that should help even things out some, right?