I've sunk to a whole new level of bad parenting.

When my now 12 y/o son was just two years old we went up north to my parent's cabin with my parents for a little fresh air outdoorsy family vacation.

This is a hunting cabin situated on 80 acres of land. I'm a city girl but enjoy the relaxing outdoor atmosphere of a little cabin vacation of (very) short lengths every now and then. A four day weekend is about all I can take.

It's a hunting cabin. Not a vacation home.

You won't find photo collages on the walls. You'll find deer heads and antlers mounted in their place.

You won't find tall standing indoor plants ornamenting the corners of the living room. You'll find a tall mounted stuffed black bear instead.

The wall hooks in the entry way are cluttered with hunting gear paraphernalia.

When you're walking to the bathroom in the dark in the middle of the night?....don't trip over the stuffed turkey in the corner of the bedroom.

Instead of counting sheep to help yourself fall asleep, you can count the number of bats you hear fluttering inside the walls.

My step dad is a hunter. He hunts. Often.

He hunts for deer, bear, turkey, duck. Anything.

It's a hunting cabin.

There are guns.

Those guns are always kept behind lock and key.

Except....

For this one time when we went up there for vacation when Hefty was just 2 years old.

Hefty came from my step dad's bedroom with a pistol dangling between the fingers of his precious little 2 year old hand...."mama, what's this?"

There are no words in the English language to accurately describe the 30 seconds that followed. The panic, the terror, the guilt, the rage that followed will be in the back of my mind to recall at any given moment for the rest of my life. My son's life flashed before my eyes in that split second. And hearing "the safety is on" somehow did not make me feel any better.

So as my son grew older and the second son came along that terror turned me into the gun Nazi. There will be no guns in my home.....real or otherwise. There will be no squirt guns. There will be no weapons. There will be no pretend shooting. And the word "kill" is strictly forbidden as a "bad word" even in play acting.

Yes, I was one of THOSE moms.

But as my boys got older and the testosterone spillith over I began to see that my efforts in gun control were failing. I'd walk to the kitchen to find my 3 and 5 year old biting their peanut butter sandwiches into the shape of guns and playing cops and robbers at the kitchen table with their peanut butter pistols. I'd walk into the bathroom and find my hairbrush being used by son #1 as a pretend rifle with son #2 spread eagle against the wall in surrender.

What's a mom to do, I mean, other than pray to the Gods that her next child be a girl?

There's just no delicate way of saying this. So I'll skip right to the chase. I'll jump right to the punch line of this story and get it all out in the open so as to not delay the inevitable backlash of bloggy parental cattiness that is sure to follow. And the emails. I'm anticipating a flow of hate mail to the tune of "what the hell were you thinking," "OMG you suck as a parent," or....my personal favorite ......"well, I NEver.....(said with disdainful eye roll)"

I bought my son a pellet gun for his birthday.

And this is no ordinary pellet gun.

It's an automatic sniper rifle pellet gun.

There.

I've said it.

I'm afraid I've sunk to a whole new level of bad parenting.

So, please tell me...indulge me if you will....in your own bad parenting moments. Is there anything you said you'd never allow your kids to do that you now find yourself allowing. Cuz I could really use a self esteem pick-me-up right about now....

Or, if your not a mom, but hope to be in the near future....please tell me the one thing that you simply WILL NOT ALLOW in your home.

You know, So I can laugh at you...

Kidding.

Kinda.