I want to be a fun mom. Not a gasping for air mom.
(Cartoon caption:) I never really rallied after the birth of my first child.
I really enjoyed my kids. They were good boys, you know, and interesting. And they didn't wear me out.
That's my parenting style - 'Go watch the TV.' I'm one of 11 children, and my mother's parenting style was, 'There's the TV. Go watch it. Mommy's got 10 other people to take care of.'
I have a two-year-old at home, and my whole life is - besides revolved around keeping this little person alive, just watching them on the stairs and eating food and everything of every minute of every day - you plan what time you're going to bed so that you can be your best self first thing in the morning.
I think I'm an extremely good mother. I know I'm an extremely good mother. But I didn't realise how much it sucks out of you.
There should be a children's song: 'If you're happy and you know it, keep it to yourself and let your dad sleep'.
Chemo days make me tired, though it's hard to say that's because of the chemo when you have kids who have inherited their dad's usual energy level.
With two sons born eighteen months apart, I operated mainly on automatic pilot through the ceaseless activity of their early childhood. I remember opening the refrigerator late one night and finding a roll of aluminum foil next to a pair of small red tennies. Certain that I was responsible for the refrigerated shoes, I quickly closed the door and ran upstairs to make sure I had put the babies in their cribs instead of the linen closet.
Years later, when I asked my father, I said 'Pop, why were you so much harder on me than my younger brothers?' he said, son, you plum wore me out.
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.
Everyone says that when you have kids, you become crazy.
One of the most obvious results of having a baby around the house is to turn two good people into complete idiots who probably wouldn't have been much worse than mere imbeciles without it.
If I don't take care of myself and be kind to myself, then I can't take care of anyone else. I think when my son was a baby I got used to not getting enough sleep, rushing and skipping meals, and feeling tired a lot of the time.
The needs of babies and toddlers were constant and drained the life out my sense of self and my family's relationship with each other.
My children weary me. I can only see them as defective adults: feckless, destructive, frivolous, sensual, humorless.
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.
As soon as you have two small children, they take up a lot of time and energy.
That was the hard part of having kids: trying to be on their schedule, then fighting to get to sleep while they are sleeping.
I have children, and they demand my full and complete attention. They get that when I'm at home, even during the night, but it is really hard, and I do wonder how a lot of women do it without bawling their eyes out every day.
I don't dislike children, I just don't particularly want to be around with them a lot. Problem is, neither do their parents.
It's a funny thing - when I'm crazed with work, spending time with my children relaxes me. Yet, at the end of a long weekend with them, the very thing I need to relax is a little work and time away from them!
Adults are tempted to produce and perform Christmas for their kids and their families, and they arrive at Christmas Day weary and disillusioned.
If there were no schools to take the children away from home part of the time, the insane asylums would be filled with mothers.
I, for one, am pretty exhausted since I started blogging almost a year ago. But I am blaming that on my two sons, aged 3 and 6, whose perpetual-motion-machine energy is hard to keep up with at my advanced age.
