This Is How We Do it...(To The Tune of Montell Jordan)

As a parent, you do anything within your means, and hell, sometimes out of them, to do whatever it takes to get your baby to stop crying, or to sleep, or to eat, or avoid killing themselves. This is why you hear about parents who drive around all night to get their kid to sleep, and how they run the vacuum in the babies room to keep them asleep. Other gems include the publicly humiliating situations of singing and dancing at the grocery store to buy some time for shopping (Josh is a master at this), and rolling the car windows up and down when you're stopped at a light to avoid a meltdown. I learned that one pretty quickly.

I think a parent's ability to come up with such creative solutions to such timeless problems is pretty impressive. Although I will say that the pressure for success is a bit greater. I mean, if your boss sat in your back seat and screamed until you solved his marketing dilemmas perhaps those would be solved quicker as well.

This need for creative parenting never seems to end. Just as one solution seems set, the game changes and you have to come up with a different plan. Our newest dinner situation is a testament to that.

Tegan's been sick. You already know this because I have flooded out social media outlets with complaints and frustrations about my sick bird. If those have bothered you, please revisit my first blog in which I address my problem with becoming "one of those parents" and in no way apologize for it.

So back to sick Tegan. A not eating well sick Tegan. She normally eats like a grown man, so when we were creeping up on 36 hours of no eating it was time for creative measures. Tried different food, different methods, different everything and nothing was doing the trick. Finally I decided a different ambiance might be in order. We moved to the patio, and some how decided to remove her clothes (when you're in the middle of figuring these things out, logic usually goes out the window, and ridiculously stupid ideas come into play). IT WORKED. Naked outdoor dinner worked and worked well. In fact, it even earned us a round of applause from T bird! She happily ate her food and later enjoyed a post-dinner semi nude romp through the yard while Josh and I reveled in our undeniably stellar parenting ability. Yay us!

(Full (naked) belly)