Outwit, Outlast, Outparent

Before you have kids, it's so easy to be snarky about all of the crap that you WOULD NEVER DO. I would never give my baby formula! I would never put my kid on a leash! I would never rub raw meat on my toddler and push her into a lion cage! Well guess what? I've done all of those things just in the last six months! Except for the leash thing. That's just messed up.

When you watch other people with their kids, you think that every move they make must be part of some brilliant philosophy of parenting. There must be a rationale behind all of these rules they've set for their kids. As it turns out, there's no philosophy at all behind parenting- except kill or be killed.  If you aren't one step ahead of them, they will be jumping on your back and sinking their deceptively sharp baby teeth into your unshowered flesh. They can smell fear, and they won't hesitate to rip out your jugular in the middle of the supermarket and leave you to bleed to death in the baking aisle. (A good rule of thumb: Just stay out of the damn baking aisle. You don't have time to bake, only to make the dough and then eat it raw by the fistful while you hide in the laundry room. On second thought, maybe the baking aisle is ok.)

I had many ideas about parenting before I had kids, and even when I had just one baby. Those were the good old easy days. Once you have a toddlerbomb on your hands, you can hear that little ticking noise 24/7- letting you know that you are mere moments from the type of explosion that would have made Oppenheimer shed a radioactive tear of joy. Avoiding that explosion, especially in public, is now your only mission in life. (Don't get me started on the idea that if your kid melts down in the store you should just leave. Really? OK. We'll just go home and gnaw on styrofoam for dinner. Thanks for the suggestion.) The reality is, you have shit to do, and it needs to get done. And those Hurt Locker suits are really heavy and way too hot for Florida.

So you do whatever you have to do just to get through it. Just to SURVIVE. Just to get home to the next Mary Poppins-esque dance party/craft fair that you have planned using organic hemp-based paints that you sourced from a women's collective in Tamil Nadu. Or to make it home in time for the Doc McStuffins marathon.  Yeah, that too. Who cares if you have to put your kid on a leash (I did this too, by the way) or if you have to buy some cheap plastic wand that your kid points at elderly people in the paper towel aisle and screams "I WILL FREEZE YOUR HEART!" At least you are still alive. Which is more that can be said for that elderly lady in the paper towel aisle with the frozen heart. She's just screwed.

Also, go see Frozen. It's good.