Like family, we are tied to each other. This is what all good musicians understand. ~ Billy Joel
After months of depression and inertia, it required something extraordinary to get me blogging again. Something so ridiculous, so unforeseen, that I just had to share it with the world. Something that would light a fire of absurdity under my ass, and get me tapping at the keyboard once again.
That something happened last week. On Halloween. Who would have thought that something interesting would happen on Halloween?
I made a lifelong dream of Loving Husband’s come true that night. (No, it’s not what you think it is, you perv. Get your mind out of the gutter.)
I bought him a lightsaber. (Again, not like that. You are FILTHY.)
We dressed Sausage up as Yoda, and Loving Husband and I went as Luke Skywalker and Princess Leia. We went out, not so much to trick-or-treat as to show off our costumes and drink beer.
Now, Sausage loves nothing better than to run. So we took him out of his stroller and let him run on the sidewalk, charging past people who were offering him candy, bouncing off the costumed legs of strangers. He loved it. He loved it a WHOLE. LOT.
But he refused to hold hands. He would scream and flail and hurl himself to the ground anytime we tried. That’s no good, especially when you’re in a city with traffic moving by only a few feet away.
Fortunately, he has really short legs, so we were able to keep up with him and grab him anytime he seemed about to veer off the sidewalk. But I had my heart in my throat the entire time. (Loving Husband was cool as a cucumber, the jerk. “He’s fine, I’ve got him,” he’d say. I would have glared at him if I was willing to take my eyes off of Sausage.)
So when we got home, I made a small purchase. Amazon has everything, you know, and sure enough, it provided me with exactly what I needed.
It arrived two days later, just in time to try it out on our morning walk.
It’s a child leash. A child leash shaped like a frog.

It needs a name. Larry the Leash? Terry Tether? Randy Restraint? No, that last one sounds too much like a sex toy.
My pre-baby self always swore that I’d never be one of those moms. You know, the ones who tie their children up rather than supervising them properly. I would never leash my child like a dog! I would hold his hand, firmly but gently guiding him away from danger while teaching him what he needs to know about the world around him. He would be disciplined enough to listen when I told him to stop, and would be happy to stay near me.
Yeah, right.
I guess I had it coming, thinking that way. Karma insisted that I end up with a little guy who is so fiercely independent, so stubborn, that at the ripe old age of 18 months he demands to run free. On the city streets. While giving his poor mother a heart attack.
So now I leash him. And he LOVES it. He can run ‘free’, with full use of both his hands, and I’m able to keep calm in the knowledge that he can’t get more than three feet away from me. Hopefully now I can also work on the hand-holding thing without all the pressure of what might happen if he should pull away.
So I’m trying to come up with a moral to this story. Maybe it’s that my version of attachment parenting involves actual tethering? Or maybe it’s that my pre-baby know-it-all self was kind of a judgmental asshole? I guess really it’s that Sausage is his own little self, with absolutely no interest in what I always thought my kid would be like. And that I’m going to have to deal with him on his own terms.
And his terms, for now, include leashing. Oh well. Maybe I could pass him off as some sort of a rare, hairless monkey. Then he wouldn’t be a leashed child, he’d be a fashionable and expensive pet.
Sounds good to me.