His quest for autonomy-my quest for serenity

So I've been taking a lot of deep breaths lately. I've also been listening to a lot of Enya and Coldplay... and when that isn't doing it, I've been strapping him in the stroller (sometimes, ok, most times against his will) and walking until the endorphins kick in.

Ah yes... toddlerhood.

Toddlers have an amazing way of keeping your ego in check. You never feel smug when he sits happily in the cart while you stroll past a kid on the floor kicking and screaming below their crimson faced parent, because you know that it will be you tomorrow.

Trying to navigate around tantrums is kind of an exhausting job. I think of it as calculated risks (a million a day). Say for example you are at the store. You come back from grabbing the laundry detergent to find that your significant other has let the child hold on to a bag of golf tees that said significant other claims the child "just had to have." Then you notice that in the amount of time it took you to whine about sticking to the list, he has chewed a hole in the bag, and is drooling all over it. You quickly calculate the risk of taking the chewed on merchandise away.

You must factor in:
- the amount of sleep the child has had
- the percent chance that there will soon be golf tees all down the aisle
- the percent chance that those very tees just got off of a boat from a foreign
land, and lets face it, are probably just sticks dipped in lead paint
- what is on hand that might distract the child from the golf tees
- the alignment of the planets
- how many people are in line at the checkout
- how fast you think you could get a screaming toddler out of the store

So you calculate, and decide to take the tees, resulting in the tantrum of the century. Was it the right answer? You'll never know.

But hey, at least you provided some birth control to the teens who were walking behind you. You are pretty sure you even saw the couple stop holding hands.