I did the one thing parents are never supposed to do.

And now I’m paying for it, big time.

Quite a while ago, I made a generalization about parents who use leashes in this post.

Of course, that was before I was pregnant with the Munchkinette and had the smugness of a parent who thinks she is done raising her kids.

I should have known better than to tempt fate like that.

Because I looked at my husband yesterday and said, “If I don’t buy a leash for this child, she is never going to be able to go out in public.”

Stubborn, defiant, and reckless do not even begin to describe her.  When we are out in the front yard playing with big brother and the neighbors, her favorite thing to do is zoom toward the street at full speed, laughing and looking back at my panicked face the entire time.  Thank God we live on a cul de sac that gets little to no traffic.

Never mind that I have told her a bazillion times not to go into the street.  Never mind that I constantly try to hold her hand and she impatiently tries to shake me off every single time. 

And she’s only seventeen months old, so this entire process is only going to get worse. 

I tweaked out my back from having to constantly stoop and chase her around, and that was just for an hour and a half in our own yard.

So after I write this, I am pretty sure I’ll be going online and searching for a kids leash that she hopefully won’t try to pull off.

Now, where’s my fork?