What is and what should never be

So I had the Led Zeppelin dialed up tonight. It's Saturday. And I think this goes back to my teenage years, but there's something -- I dunno how to describe it -- but something just right about playing Zeppelin on a Saturday night. It feels right, you know? Like that:



Yeah, that feels right. Anyway.

Becky's hanging outside Elsa's room right now waiting for her to fall asleep. We're usually not so nosy about it, but tonight we sent her to bed without her blanket. She's four. So having the blanket's cool. It's what you do at that age. You know, like 13-year-old girls clipping up their copies of TigerBeat. But with Elsa, the blanket, in and of itself, isn't the problem. It's what she does while she's got her blanket.



Oh sure she's cute as a button, but do you see those teeth? I'm pretty sure you could fly an X-Wing through that gap. The dental catastrophe that is that mouth is the result of four years of thumb sucking. A thumb that only gets sucked when she's holding her blanket. For her sake, for her teeth's sake, for our pocketbook's sake we've got to get her off that sweet, sweet thumb. Before she starts high school.

And this is new territory for us. Claire sucked a binky and we weened her from it pretty painlessly at 2. Leigh sucked her thumb up until she was one. That winter she caught a really bad cold and so couldn't suck her thumb and breath at the same time. That's right. She wisely chose breathing over thumb sucking. Elsa has yet to display that same acumen. Getting that girl to give up her thumb is going to be some kind of epic war.

Listening upstairs, the crying has stopped. Becky is not the enabler in our house, so the silence means only one thing. Elsa fell alseep without her blanket. So I guess that's a little victory for the evening. A battle won in the great War of the Thumb.

So I deal with this stuff as a parent and the words of Zeppelin's "Good Times Bad Times" come to my mind. You know: In the days of my youth, I was told what it means to be a man. Now I've reached that age I've tried to do all those things the best I can. No matter how I try, I find my way into the same old jam.

Not unlike the narrator in the song, I -- more often than not -- have no idea what I'm doing as a parent -- well, as an adult, if we're being honest. So it's a good thing Becky's up there making sure this kid kicks the thumb habit. As the enabler in this relationship, I'd let Elsa suck that thing through college.