Sometimes being a parent is depressing.

I’m not complaining, I’m just stating a fact. I think about my pre-children life all the time, how much easier it was to pack for a weekend trip, say, or to run a quick errand.  I mean, the light fixture in our kitchen takes a special lightbulb, and we’ve just been eating in the dark since it went out a few days ago. It could be weeks before we get to Lowe’s. No joke, I would rather eat in the dark than attempt to take all three of my kids to a store.

One of the things I miss most about the old Jenny, though, is what I used to look like. I know it’s shallow, but there it is. My husband says I’m more attractive than when we met; he likes that I’m low maintenance. He’s sweet. But I miss having a body that can be trusted to remain at a fairly reliable weight. I miss knowing for sure what size bra to buy, which pants will fit me correctly. Pregnancy, childbirth, and parenthood times three have changed all that.

Don’t know what to wear? How bout a baby?

My closet, right now, contains a range of sizes, clothes I bought in the early stages of pregnancy and in the months after giving birth. They’re too big for me now. At this moment I’m wearing a pair of saggy “boyfriend” jeans from Old Navy. On me, they should be called It’s a good thing you’re married because you would NEVER land a boyfriend in these jeans. However, they’re preferable to (and far more comfortable than) the other jeans in my closet, the Hey! Check out my muffin top! ones, also known as the Just wear an extra long top and no one will know your top button is undone jeans.

The last time I bought myself a nice pair of jeans was at least seven years ago, but I just don’t see the point. While it is very likely that I am done riding the whole pregnancy roller coaster, I’m still waiting to see where my body will decide to settle. Like it’s a freaking traveler on the Oregon Trail. Plus, I can’t justify spending a lot of money on an article of clothing that will be soiled within the first hour of wearing it by either a) spit-up, b) poop, c) snot, d) a condiment that was intended for dipping but which my child is eating with a spoon, e) some kind of art utensil, or f) all of the above. So I shop the Merona clearance racks at Target and make do with wearing combinations of my new stuff, which only kind of fits me, and my old stuff, which feels new to me because it’s the first time in five years that I’ve managed to cram my hips into it.

And it wouldn’t be so bad, trying to piece together an outfit from the five shirts and two pairs of shorts that fit me, but then there’s the issue of hair and makeup. The issue being, who the hell has time for that? Every time I see a fellow mom with her hair sleekly blow-dried, every highlighted strand sprayed into place, face powdered and lips bright with lipstick, I wonder what I’m doing wrong. (What business does she have looking so good, anyway? She must be trying to have an affair. That’s the only explanation.) Do I need to get up earlier? I’ve tried. The truth is, it doesn’t matter what time I wake up: I never end up looking like those gorgeous lipstick moms, and after I have spent forty-five minutes attempting to beautify, it’s ruined when I get all sweaty tackling my two-year-old to the floor because she’s refusing to have her teeth brushed.

I’m not complaining, really, I’m not. I am what I am. I’m a mom. My looks should be the last thing on my mind, especially because I would hate to send my daughters the message that that’s what matters. I guess that, with all the insanity in my life, it would be nice to look like I have it together, even if I don’t. And I know that things will start to plateau soon, and I might actually get to go shopping for clothes that fit me. At least, I hope it’s soon, because it really would be nice to make a detour to Lowe’s. Until then, I’ll be hiding in my dark kitchen.

But then 8:00 rolls around. Well, 8:30… 9:00 at the latest. Books are read, songs sung, lights turned off, night lights turned on, and these people who have spent their day in motion – running, arguing, discovering, tantrum-throwing – are still and silent. And while you love your kids all the time, obviously, it seems that with their volume turned down, your love is dialed up.

Like the other night, for instance, I crept into the room that Ceci and Alex share. Ceci had been tucked in a short time before, and I was now laying Alex down in her crib for the night. As I tiptoed toward the door, trying to make my escape as quietly as possible, Ceci shifted and groaned softly around the edges of her pacifier. Something about that moment hit me. I felt my love for her as an actual, physical pain deep in my belly, a fierce animal protectiveness: She’s amazing. She’s mine.

When Maggie, my oldest, was five or six days old I woke in the middle of the night in agony, unable to turn my head. It was my habit of staring at my newborn baby as she nursed that had caused my neck muscles to rebel, and the symbolism wasn’t lost on me. Watching over my child, it seemed, would never be easy or comfortable. Often it would hurt like hell. In those days, though, I had little else to do but look at her. In the following months we would hang out on the couch, me half-watching TV or half-grading papers or taking forty-five minutes to fold a basket of laundry while she reclined in her Boppy pillow. I would fold a pair of pants, take a picture of her. Locate the match to a sock, and then edge closer to examine her as she slept, the veins in her eyelids, her parted lips, her hands in tiny fists, prepared, even then, for a fight. She was my world. I couldn’t look away.

It’s harder now; my world has expanded. Distracted by my daily tasks, just trying to get everyone fed and bathed and changed, I find it difficult to look at my own children closely (that is, when they slow down long enough for me to catch a glimpse). At nighttime and nap times my fear of waking them almost always outweighs my desire to watch them dream – I mean, a run-in with an overtired Pray girl is like a scene straight out of The Walking Dead. It ain’t pretty.

But on occasion an opportunity will present itself. Maybe we were out late, and promised the kids we would sneak in for a kiss when we got home. Maybe Ceci is sick, and I need to check in on her during the night, or Maggie passes out in the middle of a book, even though she clearly isn’t tired.  Just today Alex fell asleep on the bathroom floor while I ran her water for a bath and I left her there to finish her nap, because I think there’s some kind of adage about that.

I love my kids all the time, obviously. But sometimes, when they are still and silent, when their breath comes in sighs and their cheeks are pink with their own body heat, when the only thing they need from me is to let them be, I can feel my love swell, bigger than I even knew.

They are amazing. They are mine. Someday they are going to hate me for taking so many pictures of them sleeping, but for now they are… waking up?

Oh. They are their father’s. Forget everything I just said. They are totally his.

This isn’t actually the look I’m talking about, but it’s a look. And a darn cute one.

Yesterday afternoon I was heading out of the YMCA with my three kids: Alex dangling in her car seat  carrier from my straining bicep, Maggie doing her crazy version of hopscotch on a “Hop Back to School” decal on the floor, and Ceci’s feet spinning like the Roadrunner as she attempted to keep up with her big sister. As I herded the older two through the turnstiles and toward the door, I noticed a middle-aged woman watching us closely, a subtle smile on her face. Our eyes met and we acknowledged each other in that silent, secret mom language: The Look.

The Look generally lasts only a few seconds at the most, but it carries with it decades, perhaps even generations, of memories and parental experiences. It says this: I may not know your name, but I know you, because I was you. I know the joy of watching your children run wildly and your desperate hope that they won’t embarrass you in public. I know the aches in your muscles and your desire to escape, if only for an hour, to a place where no one demands anything of you. My children were once as small as yours, and I would give anything to be back there again, to warm baby skin and unrestrained laughter. So I envy you, a bit, you and your fledgling love, but I pity you too, because you are drowning in the day-to-day. I see your struggle, and I understand.

That’s The Look. I see it everywhere, in grocery stores and airports, at the library and on the rare occasion when we venture into a restaurant. It is sometimes accompanied by a small gesture, a door held, a jovial, “You’ve got your hands full!” To these, I can say thank you, but for the others, the ones who catch my eye from a distance, I must reserve my gratitude and pass it on. Because I am also a giver of The Look. I know its power, and while my hands may be too full for me to help in any other way, The Look is something I can always impart to those who seem to need it.

Most of all, I love that The Look carries no trace of accusation. It isn’t a judgment of my inability to keep my kids obedient, quiet, and under control.  (Though I’ve gotten those looks too.) I’m with you, it says. I get it. I know. It’s kind of like when you’re hiking and you see someone who is on their way back down. It’s not all uphill, you think, feeling a sort of kinship with your fellow hikers. In just a little while, that will be me.

So you march uphill and you bear your load, whatever that might be: a busy schedule, a dirty house, an exhaustion that you can’t help but believe you will carry with you always. Every once in a while you’ll remember to glance up – everyone says you’re supposed to, that you have to look around and appreciate the little things. It will take your mind off of how damn hard this is. If you’re lucky, you might just catch a Look thrown your way.

And honest, your load will feel a little lighter.

Being an oldest child has got to be hard.

You’ve fulfilled all your parents’ dreams just by being born. They delight in every facial expression, every little sound you make. They take videos of you doing all those cute things you do. (Then, when they watch them back years later, they think, “What is this supposed to be? She’s just lying there.”) You are used to four eyes staring at you, four hands ready to pick you up. Everything belongs to you. Your room. Your  toys. Your mom and dad – until they get this deluded idea that you want another person around to use all your stuff and take up your space and divert their attention.

But they never asked you, did they? So eventually this other baby arrives and grows, becomes mobile, follows you around and does your bidding and worships you and agrees with you and you totally take advantage of this. It’s awesome, actually. She lets you pick out her clothes and what book to read at nap time. When you play, you’re the teacher, she’s the student. You’re Cinderella, she’s the ugly step-sister.  You’re the star, she’s the audience. When you call your mom a “poopy poop” she laughs and laughs. To her, you are the epitome of cool and amazing – until one day she decides she has opinions and preferences of her own and she (gasp!) says NO to you.

Where does that leave you? You are bereft of power and influence, set adrift in an unfamiliar world where other people are just as important as you. How does a person live like this?

Take this episode that happened with my oldest daughter just a few days ago. A little bit of background: Maggie is four, almost five. When she was about two and a half, while I was pregnant with number two, we went to visit family for Easter. She was given a Pillow Pet as an Easter gift: a purple and pink ladybug with a little velcro tab that, when undone, transforms it from pet to pillow. (Not that normal humans keep ladybugs as pets, but we’ll overlook that.) She was like, “Ooh, I love my pillow!” for about two seconds, and then, like most nice gifts my children are given, it was soon forgotten about.

Over a year passes. The pillow is in Maggie’s room, in a heap on her bed with all of her other stuffed animals, but she shows absolutely no indication that she would care if it were given to Goodwill or ripped to shreds by the dog. By that time, her baby sister Ceci is not a baby anymore. She is walking and smiling and ready to have a pillow in her crib, and one day Maggie says something like, “Here Ceci, have my pillow.” I promise you, this is how it went down.

Fast forward another year, to the present. Ceci and the Pillow Pet are inseparable. She calls it “my poo-ple pillow” and shows it to everyone she meets. She rubs the soft side of the little velcro tab to soothe herself to sleep. She freaking LOVES this thing that her older sister bestowed upon her in what we now know was a blackout episode of generosity. Because suddenly, from out of nowhere, Maggie says: “I used to have a pillow just like that when I was little.”

Seriously?

I believe in being honest with my children, even when the truth hurts. “Maggie,” I say very calmly, as if speaking to a cornered Rottweiler, “This is the pillow you used to have. But you didn’t really care about it, so now it is Ceci’s special pillow. It is very, very special to her.”

The kid just falls apart. I have seen pretty much every type of crying known to man, and these weren’t bratty tears. These are bona fide, from the bottom of her soul, I just lost the thing most dear to me in the world tears.

“IT’S MY PILLOW! YOU GAVE IT TO HER AND NOW I DON’T HAVE IT ANYMORE!”

Oh. My. God.

When she turns to Ceci and asks in her most pitiful voice, “Can I have that?”, I brace myself. Ceci has been asserting herself and standing up to Maggie, at least on occasion, for the past couple of months. But the sweet, submissive middle child hands it over, saying, “Sure. Here Maggie!” It was the least she could do to atone for ruining her sister’s life.

Unfortunately for my persecuted eldest, I wasn’t going to let that fly. In the end I had to compromise and promise to buy her a new Pillow Pet. I’ve been to several stores and haven’t managed to locate one,  and she already seems to have forgotten all about it, so it looks like the oldest child gets shafted once again. Her pillow torn from her unjustly, her demands for its return denied, and now no restitution in sight. Just another day in the life of an oldest child.

Wipe that smile off your face, you smug bug.

It’s 7:00 in the evening. The dinner dishes are put away; the children are bathed and in their PJs. Baby Alex and I have ducked into the kitchen, my unofficial writing space. From the living room I can hear the other three members of my family completely engaged in watching “Return of the Jedi”.

The Two-Year-Old: That Chewy! That Chewy! That Chewy, daddy!
My Husband (Reading subtitles): There will be no bargain.
The Two-Year-Old: There Chewy! There Chewy right there! (Pause) Where Chewy?
The Four-Year-Old says nothing, having fallen into that wide-eyed, slack-faced TV stupor that makes one wonder if she is comprehending anything she sees.
The Two-Year-Old: Chewy!

Some people call it indoctrination; we call it intentional parenting.

I have two questions for you: Why are you making me root for a cursed team, and do you realize I have no idea how to sit upright?

We started before our kids even knew what was happening: Star Wars and Chicago Cubs onesies, a bedtime CD of instrumental Phish lullabies. We were never big on listening to kids’ music in the car, so our girls learned to love the music we listened to. Maggie was barely three when I became obsessed with Macklemore and Ryan Lewis’ song “Same Love”. She called it “her song'” and asked to hear “I Can’t Change” every time we drove anywhere. These days she’s just as likely to frolic around the house singing something by Foster the People or Cold War Kids as she is to be belting out a tune from Frozen.

There’s just something about involving your children in the things you love. Maggie and Ceci, as young as they are, know how happy it makes their daddy to hear them root for the Cubbies or to snuggle with them after a long day at work and watch Tony and Michael – our kids are on a first-name basis – on Pardon the Interruption. We can’t wait to take them to their first baseball game, their first concert. The thought of teaching my girls to play pool, as my dad taught me, makes me giddy. And I can’t lie, I look forward to educating my children on the difference between good beer and crappy beer once they’re legal.

Right now our kids don’t know any better; they still want to be like their mom and dad. We know that the day is coming when that will change, and they’ll think that everything their parents do and everything we like is totally lame. Maybe they’ll get into some teeny-bopper band that uses emojis in its song titles, and we’ll totally support that. We’ll load them and a bunch of their giggling, squealy friends into the car and shuttle them to an arena where we will watch a group of pre-pubescent boys perform overtly sexual choreographed dances. We will buy them souvenir t-shirts that we think are stupid. We will hope that this is just a phase, that at some point soon they will realize that their parents’ taste in music is actually amazing, and then they will get on their knees and thank us for being so insanely cool.

Look on the bright side, Maggie as a baby- you could be wearing a gold bikini.

Our daughters are going to be who they are; we get that. We can only steer them so far. My husband and I were both swimmers, so we might prefer that they choose to join a swim team over a cheerleading squad, but in the end, of course, it doesn’t matter. (I touched upon this some about a year ago in my post  “Who Will You Be? (A Parent’s Guessing Game), if you haven’t read it!)

In a way, it’s kind of nice that our children will likely set aside a lot of the tastes and interests that we have worked so hard to instill in them. Our interests will change with theirs, because no matter what they’re into, we will want to be a part of it. It will give us a chance, when we’re middle-aged and fading into irrelevance, to broaden our horizons and get involved in something we otherwise would not have. One example: when I was in 7th grade I begged my dad to take me and my friends to a local alt-rock music festival, and he’s still listening to the Butthole Surfers. (I’ve moved on.)

But for now they’re our babies, ours to cuddle and dance with, ours to dress in amusing clothing and force to participate in themed family Halloween costumes. Which reminds me, I have to find Maggie a Princess Leia costume for her birthday party. She’s having it at the bowling alley and we’re calling it “The Empire Strikes Back”. Stay tuned for a future blog post titled, “How to Breastfeed a Baby in a Robot Outfit.”

Stop.

Stop what you’re doing right now, the thing where you make lists in your head of all the shit you need to do that you already know you won’t do today. Clean your bathroom. Change the sheets. Call someone to repair the siding that was damaged in a storm a month ago. Get to the bank to open a savings account for the baby, even though you’ve had a check in your wallet from your husband’s grandmother since the week after she was born. Write it all down already, tear up the paper, throw it in the trash. Make yourself a new to-do list that says this: Stop making to-do lists.

Stop telling your kids, Just a minute!, when they ask you to play with them, or Sure I can, right after I: wash the dishes, fold the laundry, feed the baby, pay this bill, finish this supremely important task that cannot wait.

Stop assuming the baby needs to eat or sleep every time she cries. Maybe she’s over being strapped to your torso or in a bouncy chair because you legitimately fear your other children will trample her if you allow her to lay on the floor and roll around holding her little feet, which is probably what she wants to do, because she’s a freaking baby. Maybe a boob in the mouth isn’t the answer to everything. Maybe she just wants you to look at her.

Stop picking things up off the floor as if you are accomplishing something. That Play-Doh top will be replaced by a Barbie shoe will be replaced by a half-chewed handful of raisins.

Stop checking your phone. The anecdote you posted this morning about your older two kids, and how they’re so hilariously dirty, has gotten 23 likes. So what? And it’s not like you have text messages. Your family and friends are all at work. Or, if they are at home with their kids, like you, they are too busy picking items up off the floor to think about texting you.

Stop looking at the clock and wondering when it will be nap time, when your husband is coming home, when you can put them in bed.

Stop thinking about how damn tired you are.

In this moment you are the luckiest person in the world, and you’re not even paying attention. In this moment these little girls are yours alone. One day you will have to share them, hand them over to teachers and mean girls and boyfriends and one day, God-willing, families of their own. In this moment they want their mommy, and you almost missed it.

Start here: When the older girls are napping, prop the baby up on the couch. See the way her eyes eat you up. Watch her smile when you smile. Coo to her: Goo. Gah. Hear her baby voice repeat after you. Hand her a rattle shaped like a bear or a cow, you’re not sure which. She bats it a little with her hands and lets it drop. Pick it up and shake it gently in front of her face. When she tires of this, lift her up over your head and look up at her. She is delighted, could do this for hours.

Later, when your four-year-old comes downstairs, follow her into the playroom. Clear a space for the baby to roll around. Play dolls: she is Ariel, you are Elsa. Drag a laundry basket into the already crowded space and pretend that it is a pool. Ariel dives right in while Elsa, ever cautious, perches on the side. Switch gears; she is a queen. Help her find the right tiara. Hold a tiny mirror in front of her face as she examines each option, finally settling on a silver and purple number from the Target dollar bin. Make the queen a pretend pizza in her pretend kitchen (pepperoni and green peppers, please), then ask her if she wants a real ice cream cone.

When you get another moment, after your husband has come home and dinner has been mostly eaten and put away, start a game of tag with the two-year-old. Chase each other around and around – kitchen, dining room, hallway, kitchen, dining room, hallway – while she giggles so hard you think she might actually vomit and the four-year-old watches from the table, shakes her head and says, “You two…”

Stop. Is there anything you would rather be doing? Is there anything you should have done today that you failed to do?

Not a thing.

Start being grateful. Start being present. Start being the mom your kids think you are. Start now.

The past few months have been a little wild, what with giving birth to baby number three, starting my time as a stay-at-home mom, and trying to entertain all three kids while school is out. There have been moments, probably daily, when I feel like a mental patient. Or like I somehow mistakenly ended up in a mental hospital, and no one believes me when I try to reasonably explain the mix-up. Or like I would rather be in a mental hospital, because that would be a pretty nice vacation.

Picture this: It’s lunchtime. Ceci has finished her meal and is now pawing at my leg, fingers pasty with macaroni and cheese, yelling Mom-may! Get my milk! in this strange, deep two-year-old voice that she reserves for ordering me around. (Pay with me, mommy! Mom-may! Get my shoes on!) Maggie is shoving her plate off the table because she allegedly “doesn’t like” the meal that she begged me to prepare for her literally fifteen minutes ago. Alex, who is generally a good baby, usually chooses to begin howling just at this moment, apparently agreeing with me that this sucks and that crying is the correct response. I’m standing in the middle of the melee, trying to speak to these people as if they understand logic, my voice becoming more and more desperate as I plead, “Can’t I just finish unloading the dishwasher?”

No. I can’t.

At times like these, when I find myself screaming at everyone to calm down (because that’s effective), I need to stop and give myself a silent two-second pep talk. It goes a little like this:

1. Children are disgusting. If you can remember this simple fact, and if you are strong enough in mind and spirit to accept its perfect truth, you will have a significantly greater chance of maintaining your sanity. The macaroni and cheese residue on your clothes will most likely be the least disgusting thing with which you are soiled today. Changing your clothes or your children’s clothes every time something gets dirty will just become one more thing that makes your life difficult, your laundry pile bigger, one more reason to have to haul an infant or a struggling toddler up and down the stairs and pin them into submission while they express their displeasure at having to remove said clothing. And I mean, my God, what if the new pair of pants you choose for them is “not good”? Leave the mess for now. The mess isn’t going anywhere. And as for unloading the dishwasher, it’s actually kind of nice to let something in this house remain clean for more than five minutes.

2. If the thing stressing you out is the potential judgment of others about the state of your home, the cleanliness of your children, or your own physical appearance, stop. No one cares about these things as much as you do.  If you don’t have a chance to shower because you’re dealing with your smaller fellow mental patients, guess what? In all likelihood, no one will notice. All the other parents at the YMCA or the grocery store or the playground (because let’s admit it, where else do parents go outside of working hours?) are probably wrapped up in their own worries: Is anyone is staring at the gap in my shirt that I just now realized I misbuttoned in my rush to get out of the confines of my house? Is there any conceivable way to fix it without drawing even more attention to myself? or Oh Lord, what is that on my shoe? Is it poop? or I’ll just explain to anyone who comes within twenty feet of me that we’re letting her pick her clothes out herself, because that’s cuter than the truth, which is that these are the only clean clothes remaining in her closet…

So, yeah, get over yourself. People are all way too self-absorbed to look that closely at you, your kids, or your kitchen floor.

3. There’s no point in fighting crazy. These irrational, impulsive, hyperactive small people with whom the Big Man has entrusted you are inevitably going to make you lose your mind. Embrace and accept. Instead of yelling or weeping or whatever you are on the verge of doing, make a conscious choice to be a happy lunatic rather than a raving one. React in a way that will surprise your kids into stopping what they are doing, kind of like how you spray a misbehaving dog in the face with a spray bottle. Bust out a spontaneous dance move, make up a song, pretend you’re the Wicked Witch of the West and chase them up the stairs and into their bedrooms. If you lose your cool, they win. Don’t let them win.

4. You’re actually doing fine. You don’t let them bring baby bottles of Fanta to bed with them. You feed them vegetables at least once a day. They are relatively healthy and happy (maybe not in this moment, but since they seem to have the memory of goldfish, this should blow over pretty quickly). You are not a total failure as a mother. Good job, you!

5. Maybe you are crazy, but you sure do love these little buttheads.

Psychos.

This Fourth of July weekend has been a bit incongruous for me. Amid talk of liberty, freedom, independence, and whatever other synonyms might be out there, I was at home with three small children while my husband journeyed to Chicago to see the “Treyful Dead” perform. Let me be very clear, this post is not meant to be a diatribe against my husband. I fully support his escape back to his old stomping grounds- in fact, I’m ditching him next weekend for a friend’s wedding, leaving him with all three kids and no boobs for the baby. So we’re even. 

Freedom also means wearing whatever you think looks good…

Yesterday, on Father’s Day, my sister posted a picture of her and my dad circa 1992. The photo is actually of her entire softball team, but the other girls (including me, I’m pretty sure), all decked out in green shirts and boxy, unattractive hats reading “Packy’s Pub,” the team’s local sponsor, have been cropped out. My dad is the coach. His arms are crossed and his hair, just reaching the point of more gray than black, is styled in a Mel Gibson-esque – dare I say it? – mullet. He looks tough. He looks proud. According to my sister’s caption, he is “smizing,” a term coined by the eloquent Tyra Banks. It’s a pretty spot-on character study of my jock dad, who embraced having three daughters and supported us in all of our athletic endeavors, regardless of the fact that my sisters and I were basically useless on a softball field.

I’m a little obsessed with photographs and the way they can capture the essence of a person or a moment. They’ve also become, for me, an anchor that helps me hold on to a memory, a feeling. For example: my dad and I laying on the couch in a small cabin in the Adirondacks that we rented for a week each summer. I’m three? Four? It’s clearly past my bedtime. I’m in an oversized t-shirt and I’m stretched out on top of my dad. Neither of us is smiling, which makes us look even more alike, over-tan skin, brown eyes and sullen faces. Maybe we’re just tired. Maybe he’s annoyed at my mom for ruining a nice father-daughter moment with the flash of a camera. Maybe he’s frustrated because his youngest daughter just won’t go to bed.  I know that feeling. 

This is why, when so many others are trusting their photographs to “the cloud,” I continue to order prints of all of my pictures, hundreds at a time, with doubles or triples of my favorites. I meticulously insert them into albums, trying my hardest to keep them chronological.  My two older daughters, like their mother, already love to flip through the pages and “remember” the trip we took to visit family in Brooklyn, or the time their grandparents took them to the zoo. They’re little; Ceci, at nearly two years old, won’t have any real memory of the events we are currently documenting on camera. But she will have a photograph that she can carry in her car seat with her on the way to the grocery store, as she sometimes does with a picture of her cousin Howie on a playground nearly a thousand miles away. Later, I hope she’ll tape them to the mirror in her bedroom or put them in her locker at school. Maybe she will take some to college with her, tack them up on a cork board or put a small album on a shelf above her desk.

My kids will be inundated with pictures on Facebook and Instagram, as well as whatever sites and apps I don’t even know about and the ones that don’t exist yet, but I hope pictures won’t become meaningless to them. It’s old-fashioned, but I want my girls to have something they can hold onto, not just something you swipe through, then it’s gone. I want Maggie to think she remembers the time she took up residence in a child-sized princess chair in the middle of an aisle in Target and refused to budge, for her to laugh at how stubborn she was, even at the age of two. Remember that, mom?, she’ll say. I hope she pulls that picture out to show her own kids, along with a host of other small, shiny rectangles, and they will revel in the feel of the paper in their hands, like pieces of a puzzle or a treasure map.

First, A Quiz

I don’t claim to be a professional quiz-writer like the ones for YM, but indulge me for a moment. For each of the following statements, answer “Always,” “Sometimes,” or “Never”.

• I know how to respond when my child asks a difficult question such as, “Why do all people have nipples?”
• I know when my child is actually sick and when she is just being a butt-head
• I am an effective disciplinarian
• My children listen to me
• I set a good example for my child. Like, I could say in all seriousness, “Do as I say AND as I do.”
• My child is safer in my care than she would be in anyone else’s
• When it comes to my children, I do what I feel is right rather than what “everyone else” is doing
• I feel confident in the choices I make about my child

The Truth

I Make You Feel Like a Better Parent

Here’s hoping I don’t irreparably damage these three sweet, crazy girls…

When Maggie was about two and a half, she woke up and was acting like a total brat. She refused to eat her breakfast and then kept dissolving into a screaming puddle at every little thing. “You’re hungry,” I insisted. “You just need to eat and then you’ll feel better.” Despite her hysterical protests, I finally got her seated at the table. In my meanest, sternest voice, I commanded her to take bites of apple sauce. After about three bites she threw up all over herself and the kitchen table. Clearly not my proudest moment, but guess what? I felt shitty (I still do, but maybe writing this down for all to see will serve as my catharsis and I will finally be able to let it go), I learned from it, and I hope to God that Maggie does not remember it, because there could be some expensive therapy sessions down the road…

The Moral of the Story