Sometimes, when you are deep in the throes of parenting a 2-year-old, you can wonder: Dear Lord, will this ever end? For most of us, there IS a respite. It's called 8 p.m. It's that blessed time of day when your toddler is suddenly quiet and you can peek in, see her angelic sleeping face, and know you have the strength to do it all over again.

Yes, moms and dads NEED that time from 8 p.m. to 7 a.m. So what happens when your good baby sleeper suddenly stops sleeping? Or worse, what if you NEVER had a good sleeper to begin with?

There are some sleep issues that need to be addressed now so that they might not get worse down the line. Dr. Hannah Chow is a pediatrician at Loyola University Health System who is an expert on kids and sleep. She says:

Most of you are probably way, way too young to remember the TV show Square Pegs (featuring Sarah Jessica Parker in her pre-pre-pre-Carrie Bradshaw days), but that was the first thing I thought of when I saw this clever toddler's shape-sorting shortcut. See, the title of the show was, of course, based on the saying "You can't fit a square peg into a round hole" (Parker played a not-so-popular high school student) and the whole point was how square pegs shouldn't try to fit into round holes because there ARE square holes (work with me here) where they WILL fit in, but most people still spend their entire lives trying to squeeze into the wrong shape. 

Except I don't think this kid will turn out to be one of those people. Granted, her way of, um, "playing" this shape-sorting game isn't exactly the way it was intended to be played ...

New York realtor Kevin Brown was recently taking a wealthy client around the city looking at fancy multimillion-dollar apartments. She said her daughter would be attending Columbia or NYU (or maybe Harvard), and she wanted her to have a nice place to live in the heart of the city.

So, according to CCTV, the woman settled on a swanky $6.5 million one in "One57," a building that's still under construction. Filled with luxuries, it includes a private fitness center and yoga studio, private concert hall, and a "pet wash room" among many other amenities. What a lucky girl, right? No dorm food or roommate from hell for her.

Well, except for the fact that the daughter hasn't been accepted at any of these prestigious schools, or even applied for that matter. In fact, she is 2.

Your kids are perfect, right? They say "please" and "thank you" at the right times. They chew with their mouth closed. Wash their hands often. And they never, ever use potty talk.

Well, at least that's how you like to view them. Reality, however, paints a very different picture. It makes no difference who you are or how you raise your children. No matter what your race, nationality, financial situation, or location, there is one hard and fast rule: Kids are gross.

Maybe some kids are grosser than others. Maybe some are only gross on occasion. But come hell or high water, kids will find a way to make you want to toss your cookies. You really can't blame them, though. It's in their nature.

Whether it's your own kid, a relative's, a friend's or just some stranger's kid sitting near you at Burger King, trust me, you're bound to be grossed out to the max.

Here are 6 of the grossest things kids just love to torture us with.

My daughter turned 4 in January, and she's still sleeping in her crib. Before you ask (like everyone does when I mention this fact), no it's not one of those with a removable side, or one that converts into a toddler bed. It's a regular old, four-sided crib that she's slept in since the day she was born.

Why? Well, there's no real reason I suppose, just as there's been no real reason not to keep her in there. We have a "big girl" bed for her upstairs, and while it's taking me awhile to decorate her new room, she doesn't really have to wait for the curtains, artwork, and other decorative pieces to which I can't seem to commit. It's just been my most recent excuse as to why she's still in her crib.

Forget "terrible." This 2-year-old is tricky, and by "tricky," I mean "future evil genius material." Scratch that, he's already an evil genius. Not only has this toddler figured out how to slip into his sister's room in the still of the night and steal her stuff undetected, he breaks into her room by picking the lock -- with a pair of nail clippers -- in the dark!! Luckily (for us, because it's hilarious), his parents set up a video camera to catch him in the act. And posted the results on YouTube, with the following explanation: "This is what our 2 yr old does at night. He picks the lock to his sister's room and takes her stuff ... We caught it on video."

Oh, the drama of raising toddlers. Not to mention the comedy. And occasionally the horror. Indeed, as any mom can tell you, life with little ones is so much larger than life, there's not a single cinematic category that can't be used to describe the experience. Except maybe romance, obviously. (Action/adventure? Always. Even science fiction occasionally fits.)

In fact, there've been dozens of big-screen blockbusters that sound like they could be all about parenting preschoolers (even though none of them actually are).

I admit, I feel a little defensive about my son's screen time. Letting your child play online, iPad, iPhone, and iDunnowhatelse electronic games and videos these days is up there with letting them eat sugar and food dyes. It's one of the great eeeeevillllls of parenting. I see parents handing their kids screens big and small all the time, and yet, we all claim to have "limits" and we always have a perfectly good excuse for allowing it just this once.

What if we just relaxed and stopped treating screen time like a poison we reluctantly dole out to our kids? What if there were evidence that it's not even as bad as we've been led to believe? What if screen time maybe, possibly, shockingly, teaches our kids something?