I'd Better Learn to Like Fruit Cups

Parenting is the original Ponzi scheme. Moms, dads, chumps: it's all the same. We feed, clothe, and house our kids for 30 years (it's 30 years now, right?), and in exchange, we hope those same kids don't ship us off to some joint called Mercy Ridge the minute we start eating Cream of Wheat for breakfast.

Beyond the drive to sustain the species, form families, experience unconditional love, blah, blah, blah, blah, why do we do it? Well, not unlike like many blood-thirsty predators, our kids are cute when they're young. 

My son is a year old, and his head is so big that I'm surprised light can escape its gravitational pull. He has Liz Taylor-esque eyelashes, and he says "bopBOP!" when he means "no." He also lacks the strength to fight me when I, strictly for example, want to dress him in a penguin hat and tiny red bow tie. It's like owning a real, live Monchichi.

Last weekend, my husband and I took Pork Chop (our son's street name) to my friend Kate's house for a play date with her daughter, Eva. And because it had snowed for the 529th time this god-forsaken winter, Kate suggested we drag the kids around on a sled. 

Clomping around in packed, calf-deep snow with two toddlers sounded super-duper fun times to me, but I explained that we had left our son's snow suit at Buy Buy Baby, where we never bought it. No problem, said Kate, we could use Eva's old snow suit. 

And that's how this happened:

My husband took this picture, but I'm the one responsible for putting Pork Chop in the suit. In fact, those are my boots in the background, fleeing the scene. That look on my kid's face? It says, "Lady, you may have given birth to me. You may have fed me from your own body. You may have accidentally eaten my booger when you thought it was just pear smeared on my cheek that one time. But, so help me, when I get out of this cotton candy nightmare, you're going straight to The Home!"