This week a mother in northern Israel found a snake's head in her toddler's mouth. Thankfully the child had not been bitten or harmed while beheading that snake! But here's the part that makes me want to scream: They couldn't quite identify what kind of snake it was because its head was so chewed up. OMG! NO! Chewing a snake's head -- that is the worst!

Or is it? Even the most watchful mom has found crazy, disturbing, and revolting things in our kids mouths. I know I have. I've seen rocks, coins, glitter, a random bottle cap -- well, maybe I should just stop there. I asked some of my friends what crazy items they've found in their toddlers' mouths. Are you ready? Okay, let's go there.

You're cut off, little dude!The day comes for every nursing mom: The day her baby stops breastfeeding. When I first started nursing my son, I made one of those fateful pledges that's up there with promising your first-born child to Rumpelstiltskin. I pledged to keep nursing until my son self-weaned. Baby-led weaning is an extension of on-demand nursing -- and it's an extension all right. That magical day could come at any time -- at 9 months or at ... oh Lord, what if it never comes at all?!?

This was the question I faced as we reached my son's 3rd birthday. He showed no signs WHATSOEVER of losing interest in "nursie." If anything, he was as enthusiastic as ever.  

I love Amber Dusick's blog, Parenting: With Crappy Pictures. Amber gives us little snapshots of her daily life with two little kids, only instead of golden, afternoon-shot photographs of her gorgeous children frolicking in autumn leaves, she draws these hilarious stick figures of her misadventures. Most of the time her stories are dreadfully familiar.

I can especially relate to today's post, "The Uppers & Downers of Parenting." It starts out sounding like a drug addiction confession, but actually it's about how she needs coffee and wine to function as a parent. Or more accurately, how her kids need her to drink coffee and wine to function as their parent. Oh man, can I ever relate -- especially when I was dealing with a toddler. I cringe at having to admit this, but those two beverages totally saved my motherhood.

When I was sixteen, against all parental advice, I got a job. I was a hostess at a fairly upscale restaurant in town, working a few nights a week, and I loved it. I loved seeing all the different people (met Tom Petty once!), I loved feeling like I had a purpose greater than acing tests, and I loved the camaraderie that comes with working in a restaurant. It's unlike anything else.

I loved everything about that job, in fact, besides my boss. The big, big boss.

The woman, you see, was balls out nuts. She hated most people, hated running the restaurant (it'd been passed down to her by her mother), and hated every second she spent there. It was evident by the way she barked orders at people, went from happy to furious in 0.1 seconds flat, and generally made all life around her miserable.

My toddler?

She's worse.

Broken heirlooms. Crying. Nursing at the table. Sweet potato in everyone's hair. Judgy friends and relatives grumbling. Know what doesn't pair well with Thanksgiving turkey? Toddlers. Know what I'm super grateful for this year? That my son is long past the toddler stage so I can eat my turkey in peace.

Toddlers and Thanksgiving go together like gasoline and matches, like dogs and chocolate, like fingernails and chalkboards. And the worst of it isn't even the hell your toddler puts you through as you try to survive the meal. Nope. It's the hell everyone else puts you through because you dared to expose them to the realities of a normal, healthy toddler.

In my baby book there's a picture of my older sister feeding me rice cereal and one of me chilling naked on a blanket showing off my amazing ass. That's about it. If one were to deduce anything about me from the few photos from the time I was born up to about 3 years old, you'd think I like to eat (true) and that I'm proud of my butt (eh). Had my fun-loving, humorous mom known about the book Yeah That Happened: My Terrifically Terribly Toddler, things may have been different. I might have had 150 photos with accompanying descriptions about some classic family stories, like the night I had projectile diarrhea in a restaurant high chair, or the Sunday I took off all my clothes in a church pew.

Yeah That Happened is kind of like the anti-baby book. Instead of celebrating all the cute things your baby's done, it celebrates all the ... not-so-cute things. How cute is that?

You've heard the jokes. Maybe you've even made them. "These kids are going to drive me to drink!" It's said because, well, sometimes it's true. Sometimes you'd give anything to just settle down in a quiet corner with a glass of wine and not think about where the missing bunny slipper is or why there's green crayon smeared on the dining room wall.

Enter Amy Hatvany. She knows what it's like to drink to escape, to "quiet the wildly firing synapses in my brain and the intense stress of having two very high demand toddlers."

When you're a working parent, the days that you can spend one-on-one with your kids are few and far between. Hence mommy guilt (and daddy guilt too -- I don't kid myself that my gender has the corner on the market). And from that comes the overwhelming need to plan out those special days with our kids to the nth degree. But an adorable YouTube video by a dad playing in front of a camera with his toddler just might change all that: