for this I endured 4 months of labor

I read parenting magazines with this kind of detached arrogance. I mean, I think they're wrong about basically everything, but I would kind of like to know how to make a cake like a pirate ship, and it gives me a little boost of security to hear how some of their jacked-up philosophies are not working.

That's right, I'm a parenting judger. I probably don't judge your parenting, IRL friends, because I know we've all got some pieces of the puzzle. But in a magazine, heck yes I judge. And I seriously doubt anyone has ever done weight lifting and crunches using their infant as weights, for more than like a day. Yeah, you tried it once. Doesn't count. Judging. And after you leg pressed your 3 month old 100 times, you ate a sleeve of Oreos, so quit judging me for judging you.

Where I was going with this, is, one of the things I always roll my eyes at is when a parent (in a magazine) is all like, "What do I dooo? My 3 year old said they hate me and I don't know what to do! Should I buy her a pony?" And I'm always like, "Uh, you're the parent. It doesn't matter what your kid thinks. Be a man, lady." And I have these whole rants in my head about people who let their kids run everything and don't reign them in or parent them, because of their emotional need to be accepted by a FOUR YEAR OLD.

But then today I was super-parenting my way through a loaf of bread and a vat of peanut butter and such and some paper plates, Toby watches me yawn and says "I wish you'd sleep forever so you wouldn't bug me about my computer time." And I'm standing there making a sandwich for the little ingrate, and I am trying to think of what is the appropriate parental response to this. a) drop the knife and go on strike until he took it back or b) burst into tears and lay on the floor until he said he loves me and knows he owes me his LIFE.

In the end, I made some kind of vague comments about how much he'd miss me if I slept forever, and he looked stricken for a moment, WIN for me, until he said, "But I'd need my Webkinz code!" and rethought his plan to send me into hyper-sleep eternally.

One of these days I'm going to go check into a LaQuinta somewhere for 24 hours and watch Dr. Phil and Sandra Bullock movies all day and turn off my phone. Then we'll see how much everyone loves me. And I will take the Webkinz code with me. That'll show 'em.