About the year when my toddler son decided he was through with me:

One day last fall, my three-year-old son Danny got pink eye, and I stayed home to rub antibiotic ointment on his eyeballs every four hours. It's not easy to get a toddler to sit still while you stretch his eyelids apart and poke your finger into the crevice below. But, fortunately for bribing purposes (although unfortunately for all other purposes), the pink eye hit during the reign of ChuChu. Danny was obsessed with the seizure-inducing YouTube videos, in which obese animated babies dance jerkily and sing nursery rhymes. Over the course of a very long day, the tinny music resounded throughout the living room while Danny, feverish and dejected, sat slumped on the couch, staring at the screen of my laptop through red, mucous-y eyes.