Before long you’ll squidge a booger from your child’s nose in a public place and wipe it on your pantleg, as fellow diners or shoppers cast disgusted glances your way. That’s when you’ll realize that you’re doomed to never again be hip.

That’s why we love the company of like-minded souls: others who know from experience that a shirt with one cashew-butter smear is easily two barfs away from being truly dirty, and totally wearable by either mother or father.

Comrades are nonplussed, unbewilderable. They get us, and we get them. To each other, we’re all still cool. A fine consolation, even if the rest of the world is not in agreement.

Yes, we sniff our kids’ rear-ends in restaurants.

And yes, sometimes we follow that with a loud, proud “Phhhheeeewwwww!”, accompanied with comic eye-rolling and mock swooning.

But, we tell ourselves, we have a lot of wooden toys or we don’t watch the Backyardigans or we don’t shop at Wal-Mart or Evan likes Gorillaz in the car. So there.

Everyone has their own principles, from secondhand kids’ clothing to veggie hot dogs. Distinctions and subtleties that bolster us against the wave of ordinary, predictable, porridge-coloured, 50/50 cotton-polyester parenthood.

For us it’s been music, which rings through the house almost nonstop. We’ve wandered the hallowed halls of iTunes in search of anything Disney and dinosaur-free. We discovered our beloved Pete Seeger and the loony-British-granny feeling of The Gruffalo, but right now, impossibly funky, acoustic Dan Zanes (and his friends) provide the soundtrack of our revolution. I simply have to pass it on, fist in the air, to all my fellow anarchists. Shout out.

Everybody duck. Oncoming rant: Why do the high-roaders seem to be the most judgmental of the choices of others?

Some mothers believe they’ve made supremely educated, intuitive decisions about parenting – especially when it comes to sleeping and feeding. Unapologetically holier-than-thou, anything counter to their methods is dismissed as heartless neglect.

“My little Sunshine is cheerful, well-adjusted, spirited, trusting and confident,” they crow. “We have a stronger bond because she hasn’t been broken and abandoned, because she co-slept/wore cloth diapers/never had to cry/was born underwater/never watches TV/didn’t get shots/never gets put down/self-weaned!”

And they float, smugly, saintly, miles above the rest of us unenlightened plebes and our damaged offspring.

I’m fed up. The melodrama, the guilt-mongering and pressure. The almost desperate need to credit everything good about children to superior philosophies. As though all other kids are lacking, cheated, scarred.

These are smart, empowered, inspiring women. Why do they have to turn parenting into a sorority? We're nowhere near crunchy enough to qualify.

Back in university, in womens’ studies courses, the most revered feminists were the lesbians. The highest calling of warrior womynhood. If you were ordinary, you were deemed feministically unfashionable, brainwashed, discounted.

Likewise, here: if you’re revealed to have given your kid a bowl of roadtrip Kraft dinner at a gas station, you’re lower-caste. Owning up to your compromises earns as much unimpressed silence as farting in a crowded elevator.

Not that I don't have my own righteous assumptions. I do.

But when they bubble up, they stay capped where they should be: behind a face of support. No matter what our preferences and prejudices, the goal is happy, healthy kids and happy, healthy parents. I don’t care how they got there: as long as they get there.

Heck, I was formula-fed, and probably cried myself hoarse. Am I less assured? Less trusting? Less connected? Do I have hidden anger towards my parents? Of course not. I’m happy and healthy because they always let me know that they loved me.

In the trenches, everybody stinks. Grace and acceptance are emotional deodorant. Absolutes don't apply.

Evan breastfed and slept like a champ. The sling drove him nuts, and he was restless in our bed while stretching out languorously in his own. The next one might curl our teeth with every wail, a leaky boat on rough seas in need of safe port and a new bag of tricks. But no matter what our chosen voodoo, you won’t catch me preaching.

Except to say: to each their own.

<phoot!> 'Scuze me.

I'm the furthest thing from an early adopter... counter-intuitive, given that I write about technology. I'm practically a luddite, averse to everything from modern marketing (go figure) to DVDs.

My friend and recent colleague Michael, who is not only an early adopter but a technology visionary and entrepreneur, introduced me to del.icio.us tags - the green word cloud on the right sidebar of this blog.

It's a jumping-off point to wander where I've wandered: a great way to share new discoveries and noteworthy destinations, tagged by topic. It will keep growing, so check back now and then if you're ever in the mood for a little surfing.

We now return you to your regular programming, as Evan impersonates Chris Farley impersonating a Luddite.

It is springtime, after all. And springtime brings new things: french fries, skiing, apple juice with soda bubbles, elevators, hotel hallways, flirty waitresses, running, big-boy longjohns and see-through stairs. Who needs toys when the world is so terrific?

We tickle and chase, peek and boo. He requires less attachment but more diplomacy, having learned the meaning and application of Being Irate, Denying Permission and Listening Selectively. In protest (usually upon removal from Fun), he is now more rigid, more limp and more ear-splitting.

It still cracks us up, the force of his drama. How is it possible, in a realm dominated by explainable physics, that his weight triples during extrication? Toddler magic.

I talk to him constantly, expecting more companionable babble than comprehension. But today as he wandered I said "Evan?" and he turned as if to say "Yep?" and I said "Show me your belly," and he grinned, pulled up his shirt, stuck out his tummy and ran to me so I could give it a poke.

We leave the grocery store with the best of intentions and two months later, cleaning out the cupboards, conduct an en-masse health food dump. Beginning with the stale, unopened All-Bran, which we bring to the beach for a lesson in nature nurture.

They gather as we approach, feast-clucking.

We ceremoniously sprinkle the tiny brown nobules, which instantly balloon with grass sweat and dried-up droppings.

We stare at the ducks; the ducks stare incredulously at the ground.

Then it hits them: It’s Them Again. They won’t even pass over Mount Fibremore, skirting the edges with suspicion.

We go back the next day and the pile sits undisturbed, the ducks giving it embarrassed sideways glances, shuffling and waiting for the popcorn lady.

“The way to start blogging,” said one self-proclaimed queen of the hipmama blogosphere, “is to vomit onto your laptop.”

Mmm, nutty. Pure, raw, uncensored … grocery lists, asparagus recipes, husbandly complaints, rants about broken subway ticket dispensers and more wandering, manufactured drama designed to add pathos to relatively uneventful, fortunate lives.

Everyone wants to be a star. To be beloved. To have a posse of devotees blow sunshine up their bum on every post. Tell me how special I am, sister, and I’ll tell you how your post about that ill-fated brazilian bikini wax had tears streaming down my face in solidarity. Let hipmamas everywhere stand up, Bugaboos and low-rise yoga pants in hand, and be heard!

Gag me with a spoon. And god willing, I will be able to type between heaves.

There are flashes in the mud, places and people you trip over and frantically bookmark lest they disappear, passing hand reaching through a flood to grasp at substance. It doesn’t take much. A point is enough to float with.

Lord bless the thinkers – the mama-thinkers, the marketing-thinkers, the friendly-technology-genius-thinkers. As long as they enlighten, inform and provoke. They shame me for being just another insufferable blogging mother, me with my frozen vegetable dilemmas and repressed sitz bath trauma.

That said, I do relish a good pair of low-rise yoga pants.

Today’s floater: I will never vomit on anyone who happens upon me. It’s just bad form. Unless, of course, I am child-free in Vancouver at Shine on a Thursday night, belly full of blow-torched mackerel and teeny, tiny beers. In that case, I can’t make any promises.