Dandelion Whine

Over the past four-plus years I've learned a lot about parenting. Most of it was trial-by-error, some of it came from watching reruns of The Cosby Show and Who's the Boss, and the rest from making alliterative similes: Parenting is like a delicate dance amongst dandelions.

Before you grab the Weed-B-Gone, hear me out.

Imagine that in front of you is a field full of millions of whispy dandelions. Aren't they lovely? You know you want to run through them like this:

Parenting, though, is like making your way through that field as carefully as possible, and, yet, no matter what you do, no matter how careful you place each step, there's bound to be some chaos. Some of those dandelions are going to burst.

We try to carefully tiptoe through the dandelions around here, but there are chaotic bursts we can't seem to avoid: getting the kids in the car on weekday mornings, talking on the phone anytime The Wubster's near, bedtime and Mini-Me, pretty much every meal and, on that note, most trips in public with the kids.

Despite that chaos, though, we keep dancing through the field because, like Opus told us, we all need a dandelion break some times.