Jess and I are starting to get into that whole "parental discipline" thing.

She's crawling and cruising and while the living room is about as baby-proofed as it can get (exactly where do all these magazine editors store their shit if their house is perfectly baby-profed? oh, that's right, they're rich, they can AFFORD a storage unit. Well, I can't, so I have to do the best I can to keep things away from the baby that she shouldn't eat.) there are still things that she can (and does) get into that I'd rather she didn't.

Which leads us to discipline...

Ug.

I'm not entirely sure how this is supposed to work, really.

Jess likes to pinch me. And we're not talking little cute pinches, either. We're talking about black-and-blue mark leaving pinches. It hurts. A lot.

And I tell her no, and move her hand off my leg. You'd think I just broke her arm, the way she screams about it... but she just tries again. And I move her hand and tell her no. And she screams more. And cries. And tries to pinch my leg. And on and on and on until she's red in the face and hiccuping and I'm so close to punting her down the hallway that I feel like a terrible awful mother and someone ought to take this child away from me before I beat her to death. And then she wanders off to do something else for twenty minutes or so. And as soon as I'm back to whatever it was I was doing (attempting to watch a movie or read a book or chat on the computer or whatever...) she comes back over and tries to pinch my leg again.

She doesn't want to be distracted with a new toy, or fed, or held or whatever. She wants to pinch me. That's it.

Did I want a baby? Did I really?