Overlords

Before Odessa was born, this probably would have driven one of my ovaries off a cliff.



Seriously, that little girl is probably the cutest thing I've ever seen in my entire life and I've seen a baby otter before. But when someone sent me this video this morning, my first thought was, "Wow, that child is WORKING it."

At this point, I'm pretty familiar with the machinations of the toddler mind. And I'm here to tell you: they are not sophisticated. The way I see it, because toddlers require the services of adults, and because the powers of rational thought and rhetorical nuance are unavailable to them, they have to be adorable little cupcake faces who say crazy stuff that would put normal people in high security mental facilities. And lord love'em, it's effective. In some cases--like the one pictured above--it might even be considered overkill.

I sometimes feel like my cute receptors--which used to be so painfully sensitive before I became a parent--have been filed down with one of those huge iron rasps that farriers use to file horse hooves. Because the cuter Odessa gets (and yes--she's getting even cuter every single day), the more tyrannical she becomes. Which just means that every day, I have to redouble my defenses against toddler chicanery.

And it's tough for people who aren't seasoned. I once came home to find Audrey shaking like a Jello salad over a particularly harrowing snack-time episode in which Odessa wanted something off the kitchen shelf that Audrey either couldn't figure out or wouldn't give her because it was cornstarch or something. My sweet, mushy-faced little picklepants had yelled at Audrey in the cutest way ever for like 15 minutes before I rescued her at the 11th hour. Audrey, who was seriously in need of a cigarette or Oxycontin or something by the time I got home, had this to say:

"She's so adorable, and yet so powerful!"

And I was like, "Survival of the fittest, baby."

Because I have met our Overlords, and they're super short and spray little bits of spittle when they talk.