Kids can be a pain in the neck when they're not a lump in your throat.
Everyone should have kids. They are the greatest joy in the world. But they are also terrorists. You'll realize this as soon as they're born, and they start using sleep deprivation to break you.
There is nothing more boring for an intelligent woman than to spend endless amounts of time with small children.
Nothing prepares a family for having multiple children at once.
As much as my kids keep me young, they also have the reverse effect when I don't have the energy.
What I hate is the thought of being under a man's thumb," I had told Doctor Nolan. "A man doesn't have a worry in the world, while I've got a baby hanging over my head like a big stick, to keep me in line.
My children are 12, 12, 8, and 7, which is bad idea, bad idea, bad idea, bad idea, for mom going inside.
And if you look at pictures of Eleanor between 1918 and 1921, she becomes anorexic. She really loses a tremendous amount of weight. That's when her teeth really go bad. It's a terrible, terrible time for her. And she has five children, ranging in age from three to 10. It's an emotionally terrible ordeal.
Somehow, since I became a family, every minute in which I am alone and not listening to two kids screaming in stereo feels like a vacation.
The world is full of women blindsided by the unceasing demands of motherhood, still flabbergasted by how a job can be terrific andtorturous, involving and utterly tedious, all at the same time. The world is full of women made to feel strange because what everyone assumes comes naturally is so difficult to do--never mind to do well.
You hear so much awful stuff before you have a kid, like you'll never sleep again, we always knew it would be utter garbage. We're pretty relaxed people, the less stressed you are the more easy you'll find parenting.
Sorry, there's nothing like a screaming baby to make a mother twitch.
One of the sad realities of being a parent is that the same stuff you know is exciting, educational, and enriching in your child'slife is often messy, smelly and exhausting to deal with.
If they would all sleep all the time she wouldn't mind being their mother.
Kids want you to take them to whatever kid movie is opening, and you just hope it's good because you're going to buy a ticket, no matter what. If it's no good, you kind of drape your arm over your kid so they don't get smashed, and you take a little nap.
Let me tell you something, planes and kids... I've got a 3 and 1 year old, I don't wish that on anybody.
That was the hard part of having kids: trying to be on their schedule, then fighting to get to sleep while they are sleeping.
In my mind I first felt like, Oh, I'll be back to work right after the babies are born. But then you don't want to. Even now, it's very difficult for me to leave them in the morning. It just tortures me. I'm like, It's been hours; are they wondering where I am? Do they know that I love them so much and I'm thinking only about them?
I don't dislike children, I just don't particularly want to be around with them a lot. Problem is, neither do their parents.
Sometimes it's a bizarre, fairly cold, and horrifying thing to be a parent.
I frequently do drive carpool in the clothes I slept in, because it's impossible to get three children out the door with lunches packed and all that stuff and have a do.
Babies have much higher levels of stress in childcare.
The fear of failure is so great, it is no wonder that the desire to do right by one's children has led to a whole library of books offering advice on how to raise them.
I believe there's a secret chemical that's turned loose when you have kids that says you've got to survive, you've got to be strong. That keeps you on your toes, besides all kinds of other things, when you have three little ones running around.
Looking after a disabled child pushes you to the limits of what you can cope with... physically, emotionally. It's because there's this baby, this child that you love more than you can possibly imagine, in some way more than a normal child because you worry about them 24 hours a day. But at the same time you are so, so proud of them.
