Today I spanked my child for the first time.

Now, I know that there are two distinct camps when it comes to spanking, and there’s not a whole lot of middle ground. There are those who believe that spanking teaches children a definitive lesson about their behavior – don’t do it again or here’s what will happen – and there are those who see spanking as hypocritical and confusing, particularly when using it to reinforce a point about children exhibiting aggressive behavior toward others. While I have always belonged to the second group, my three-year-old has brought me to the verge of spanking more than once.

Those who are merely acquainted with Maggie in social settings express doubt when I tell them what a you-know-what she can be. In public she is generally a darling, acting shy at first but eventually dazzling onlookers with her adorable giggle and unusual perceptiveness. But in our home, especially when we are out of our typical school year routine, she is an expert button-pusher. (Quick aside: Not that I’m big into astrology, but October 7th, her birthday, is listed in this birthday book I have as the Day of Defiance. It’s proven accurate even from the time she was about eighteen months old, when she was told that if she put her feet on the dinner table she would be removed and the meal would be over. She quickly figured out what to do when she didn’t feel like sitting at the table anymore…)

Anyway, I thought our day was starting out pretty well. The kids slept in until 7:30. I managed to feed them breakfast quickly enough to usher everybody into the car and head to the gym so I could enjoy a yoga class. We came home and they played outside while I weeded the mulch beds. So far, so good. I had planned to take them to meet up with some friends at the small water park at the Y after nap time, but lo and behold, neither child was really in the mood for a nap. Despite my better judgment, I forged ahead. Quoting my neighbor, who had suggested going to Waterworks, “The thought of them hanging inside the rest of the day was giving me hives.” I packed everything we would need, got the baby in her swimsuit, and focused on getting Maggie ready to go. If only it were that easy.

The struggle began over something completely idiotic. For about the past year, getting Maggie dressed has been the least favorite part of my day. The child has literally 25 dresses hanging in her closet, and while she has probably worn each of them at least once, it chafes me that she wants to wear the same stupid two every single day. It doesn’t matter if someone she loves bought her an outfit or sewed it for her themselves, she cannot be convinced to wear something that she doesn’t want to wear. As I have stated before, I am a woman of principle. I do not believe in wastefulness, and I have a problem with the fact that time and money have been spent on giving her things that she refuses to use. As a result, every day I attempt to steer her away from those same two dresses and try to get her to wear something she doesn’t usually wear. This is the way it normally ends: she may agree to try something on, but after about five seconds she starts clawing at it, claiming that some very specific thing is wrong with it: it’s too tight, too big, not long enough, she doesn’t like the buttons or the way it feels. Then she goes completely boneless and basically can’t function like a human being again until I remove the offending garment.

I understand that my ideals about clothing use are far beyond the ability of a three-year-old to grasp, yet I can’t stop trying. So, today, in the midst of getting her changed into her bathing suit to go to the Y, I grabbed a tank top and skirt from her drawers and stared to toss them into the bag so she would have something dry to wear when she was done swimming. My precious child snatched them from my hand and threw them across the room, screaming, “No! Not those ones! I’m going to choose them!”

An hour later she was eating cookies and kissing on her sister. Jekyll and Hyde much?

This was one of those pivotal moments when I could have changed course and avoided a fiasco, but no, I had to stand on principle. “Maggie,” I said, “You may NOT grab things out of my hand. I am going to put these back in the bag, and if you take them out again, we will not go to the water park.” You can guess what happened next. Out came the skirt and shirt, and I, the reasonable adult, responded. “Okay then. We’re not going.” I had to do it. I had made the threat, and there was no backpedaling. Either I was a woman of my word or I wasn’t.

I knew it wasn’t going to go over well, but I couldn’t have predicted that my naked banshee of a daughter would pick up her (rather heavy) piggy bank and throw it at me, narrowly missing her baby sister’s head. I mean, that kid put some muscle behind it. And with her naked bottom right there, I couldn’t help myself. If anything warranted a spanking, this was it. One quick pop and down to time-out she went.

You know, I wish there were a moral to this story. Did the spanking make me feel better? Not really. Am I going to do it again? I don’t plan on it.  If there is anything to be gleaned from this experience, it’s that arguing with a three-year-old is pretty much the most unreasonable thing an adult can do. (But of course, I’m going to do it again – you know, being a woman of principle and everything.)

Two nights ago I went to see the movie The Fault in Our Stars. For those of you unfamiliar with the film or the book by John Green that it is based on, it is the love story of teens Augustus and Hazel, one recently cleared of cancer and one undergoing experimental treatment that has kept her alive years longer than anyone had thought possible. It is a beautifully written, sometimes funny, heartrending story, but it was especially poignant on this particular evening.

Ten years ago on this day, my friend Sean turned twenty-two. Two days later, on June 10, 2004 he was killed in a car wreck on his way to the Bonnaroo music festival in Tennessee. It was the worst day of my life. I have largely avoided writing about it, partly because I don’t quite trust my memory to get the details just right, and partly because of the pain I knew it would cause myself and all of the people that loved Sean. You see, I was there that day. I just happened to be in the right car, the one that wasn’t clipped by a tractor-trailer cab changing lanes at seventy miles per hour.

I have had ten years to mourn for my friend, the foul-mouthed musician with a heart of gold. He was my best friend’s boyfriend, and as such he was a kind of brother figure- making fun of me for my crushes, handing out noogies, telling me that I needed to gain some weight, which I guess is why he forced about half of his breakfast on me when we stopped at a Hardees a few hours before he died.

Every time I see a dragonfly, I know that Sean is okay. (That’s a story for another day.)

For a long time, too, I mourned for myself. That day altered the course of my entire life. I was just a twenty-year-old girl on my way to a rock concert, wearing linen drawstring pants and a shirt that my mom sewed for me that tied in the back and told the world that I was young and carefree, bras be damned. Moments later I was standing stupidly in the hot, sharp grass by the side of the highway, trying to make sense of the scene that spread itself out before me. (I remember it, but I won’t describe it. What would be the point of that?)

I do know that throughout the ordeal I repeatedly felt as if I were out of my own body, viewing the tragedy from afar, and the strangest thought kept entering my mind: Poor kids.  I stood apart from my traumatized self and watched as two young women, one of them me, embraced in the midst of burnt rubber and broken CDs and waited for a ride to the hospital. The helicopter carrying Sean had already taken off. The EMTs had stopped CPR. We were pretty sure we knew what we would hear upon arrival, but “dead” still felt impossible to process. And the whole time, that thought: Poor kids. We were nearly a thousand miles from home, about seventy miles from our destination. So close. And now we needed to function, to speak to doctors, find a hotel, get on a plane and face the rest of our lives. It wouldn’t be easy. For the next year or so I would experience vivid flashbacks. I would break down at the slightest reference to anything remotely connected to Sean’s death. I would return to college for my senior year and blame everyone in my path for not understanding, but how could they possibly? Slowly, and with the help of individuals that I truly believe God put in my path for just this purpose, I began to piece myself back together.

Grief and trauma lessen, but they don’t go away. I felt it on Sunday night, ten years after the fact, watching this film about two teens who were, for reasons unknown, just dealt a bad hand. But I realized, as I crumpled up yet another tissue, that these tears were coming from a different place. I wasn’t thinking about the loss of my friend, I was trying not to imagine the agony of losing one of my own children.

At one point in The Fault in Our Stars the narrator writes, “There is only one thing in this world shittier than biting it from cancer when you’re sixteen, and that’s having a kid who bites it from cancer.” Since becoming a mother, ten-year-old memories have taken on a new pain. My grief will become fear if I let it. I could walk around, constantly afraid that one day I will be the one receiving the most terrible phone call imaginable. I could think, every time I look at my children, “This could be our last day together,” which I guess would help me appreciate the little moments, but in all honesty, I don’t want to have that in my head every day; it’s too terrifying to even entertain. Terrible, tragic, unjust things happen all the time, but if I allow myself to think that they might happen to my child, I will be paralyzed by even the thought of that loss.

My heart has always been with Sean’s mother. Now, as a mother’s heart, it grieves with her even more. I hope it gives her even the smallest amount of solace to know that after ten years he is still remembered, he is missed, he is loved.

I fell in love with my husband for a host of reasons: his thoughtfulness, sense of humor, boyish good looks, spontaneity, ability to pair a button-down dress shirt with a tie-dye t-shirt. It was pretty clear from early on that we were compatible. However, I have found since having children that even if we shared every interest in the world, the most crucial measure of compatibility – and the one that will make or break a marriage – is our parenting philosophy. 

Maggie was using my phone to Face Time with a friend… so I  borrowed my husband’s phone to take a picture.

April 29, 2014 was an exciting day in the Pray household: Baby Cecilia, at a few days shy of ten months old, took her first steps. Luckily, but not surprisingly, my iPhone was within arm’s reach, and I was able to capture the momentous event on video and post it immediately to Facebook. Within an hour, friends, relatives, and acquaintances all over the country had seen and “liked” my second daughter’s big accomplishment.

This wasn’t the first time that I had advertised one of my children’s developmental milestones via social media. In fact, when I find myself getting behind in Maggie or Ceci’s baby books, and I can’t remember when they first smiled or said “mama” or spent the night at their grandparents’ house, I go back to Facebook to find out. What can I say? My kids are super amazing and talented, and as a proud parent I want to share. Plus, Maggie and Ceci are involved in probably 93% of everything that happens in my life that anyone else would find remotely interesting. But here’s the problem: I legitimately can’t stop. It isn’t just that I want to share. For reasons that I can only label as addiction, I’m compelled to share. And once I hit the “share” button, I’m compelled to keep my phone by me and check it every five minutes to see how my adorable photo or video or hilarious “kids say the darndest things” post is being received.

Clearly, I’m not the only one who is experiencing these struggles. All I need to do is look around me in any given setting to see the prevalence of technology in our lives. Human interaction is becoming a problem; patience, perhaps an even larger one. Like a controlled substance, the smart phone is our answer to boredom and loneliness. When I googled “smart phone addiction,” plenty of the results related to parents like me who want to raise their children according to certain principles but can’t seem to set the right example when it comes to technology.

Whenever I contemplate taking a step away from social media, I immediately dismiss the notion. Like anything that’s bad for me, I do it because I like it. I think it is so awesome how motherhood and Facebook go hand in hand. As soon as I became a parent, I joined a club that includes people I was loosely acquainted with in high school, cousins I didn’t actually know that well when I was growing up, and colleagues with whom I might not have that much else in common. These people get it. They understand why I can’t help posting pictures of my daughter’s naked butt. They are willing to respond to a question about car seat brands or baby constipation. They (I hope) don’t judge me when I have to vent about how “bad” my kids can be and how much my life “sucks”. Even better, the club isn’t exclusive. When I had Maggie back in 2010, people I hadn’t talked to in ages, who don’t have children themselves, suddenly came out of the woodwork. It was weird, but wonderful, to see the reactions that other people had to my little girl.

As a result, I have reconnected with the most unlikely people. Although these may not be “real” friendships, they make me feel supported, and sometimes that’s all I need. So I, in return, get to be a part of that support network for others, and cheer them on as they share their own milestones. I love watching families grow on Facebook, from the wedding to the first ultrasound picture to the soccer games and high school graduations.

So how do I find a healthy balance? How do I make sure that my daughters don’t grow up believing that an iPhone is an absolute necessity, an essential extension of the body? How do I keep it from becoming a distraction that causes me to miss special moments rather than save them? How do I teach my children that the people in front of them will always be more important than any device?

I wish I had the answer. Try, I guess. Take some first steps – baby steps, most likely. Press “Post” and walk away until tomorrow, so that I can be present for the rest of today.

Tonight, for no good reason, is one of those nights when I feel like I am on the verge of losing it. As is usual on these types of occasions, it wasn’t one specific incident that tipped the scales, but a delicate concoction of increasingly annoying circumstances: At school today, an unproductive planning period that resulted in an even larger pile of papers cluttering my desk; a school bag stuffed with work that would follow me home; forty-five minutes of watching my eldest daughter be “that kid” at her swim lesson and running the risk of being labeled a helicopter parent if I intervened; the same child’s declaration, “I don’t like you and I don’t love you” because I wouldn’t allow her to play games on my phone as we drove home; a crappy salad for dinner because I was attempting to be healthy, but really wanted, like, a double bacon cheeseburger smothered in chocolate chip cookie dough ice cream; two crying children in the bath (one, because her sister was repeatedly kicking her, the other because she wanted her sister out of the bathtub); and then, on top of everything else, the ridiculous chore of picking up our house for the freaking cleaning lady.

I was completely aware, throughout the day, of my elevating stress level. I could feel my blood pressure rising, my ability to keep my cool steadily decreasing. I yelled at my nine-month old for sticking her hands in the toilet while we waited for the bath to fill. I snapped at my husband when he asked if I wanted him to work on cleaning or if he should try to rock the baby to sleep. I told myself, as calmly as possible, that nobody benefits from my bad mood. But, as many of you probably know, cold, hard reason isn’t terribly effective when you’re legitimately losing it.

“It”: a tiny pronoun that encompasses so much. My mind, for one. My body. My ability to carry on a phone conversation that requires actual listening. A lot of my friendships, probably because I can no longer carry on a phone conversation that requires actual listening. Relaxing dinners out. Movies more  than ninety minutes long. Spontaneity. Uninterrupted quality time with my husband.

The list goes on. Forget about losing it. “It” is long gone.

When I was nineteen, I got my tonsils removed. Before the surgery, my mom and I sat down with my doctor and he read out a questionnaire that was meant to determine how I would deal with the stress of the procedure. I remember laughing as we described my most common response to stress. When I was in high school, my mom would frequently wake up to the smell of brownies or muffins and come downstairs to find out what was wrong. Apparently this was enough for the doctor to believe that I wouldn’t lose it; with the help of baked goods, I could cope.

Eleven years later, I have other tools at my disposal. An episode of The Mindy Project. A glass of Pinot Noir. A Pandora station called “Indie Rock Dance Party”. Supportive work friends. Yoga. A husband who really, really, wants to make my life easier.

I love my children with every tiny atom of my being. Their ridiculously cute faces grin at me from the desktop of my school computer. I constantly catch myself telling stories about them that no other human being could possibly care about. I know that some of this craziness and chaos will end when they grow up, but I don’t want them to grow up.

You all know where this is going. You know that regret isn’t a part of my vocabulary. I’ve gained more than I’ve lost. My life is bigger, more fulfilling, better in a lot of ways, but it doesn’t stop me from missing some of what I’ve lost.

As a writer I long for closure, a clean and clear-cut way to wrap up. Tonight, I think, it’s not going to happen. Parenthood is what it is. It isn’t clear and it sure as hell isn’t clear-cut, and the majority of the time it makes me feel like a genuine psycho.

The end.

I was going to title this post “Living With Discipline,” but then I thought that might be misleading. When I think about that phrase, I think about somebody who gets up at 4:45 every morning to get a workout in before the kids wake up, someone who only allows themselves two alcoholic beverages and one dessert per week, someone who controls the number of minutes that they spend perusing Facebook and Instagram each day. That person, clearly, is not me.

No, what I mean is living with the butt-naked, possibly possessed, supposed-to-be-napping child who, until about 40 minutes ago was shrieking at me from the top of the stairs to read her a book. (Now she is peacefully sleeping on her bedroom floor…not that I have DARED to get close enough to confirm that.) That, my friends, is the kind of discipline I am referring to.

You think I’m leaving without this princess chair? Try me.

Let me back up: Maggie, while at her sweetest is the most darling child ever on the face of the planet, at her worst honestly reminds me of the kid from The Exorcist. She has been this way from the very beginning- difficult to please, impossible to reason with, and as they say down here in the south, as hard-headed as they come. I truly believe that I have been dealt this lot in life because I was such a butt to my own mom when I was growing up, but that’s a tale for another day. Of course, today when nap time rolled around my husband was out of the house (coincidence?), but the routine was the same as always. Pull-up on, read two books, sing two songs, music on. I set her “Owl”, her alarm clock, for the time when she’s allowed to wake up, and as long as she’s quiet, we’re good.

Unfortunately, our routine hit a snag when Maggie decided she wanted four books instead of two.

Me (Very calmly): We read two books. Which two do you want me to read?

Maggie: I don’t like you.

Me (the human embodiment of a cucumber): That’s fine. Now which two would you like me to read?

Maggie (Not at all calmly): NO! WE READ FOUR!

Me (Again, very reasonable): Maggie, if you scream at me again, I’m not reading you any books. Do you understand? You don’t speak to your mommy that way.

Maggie: NO! I CAN YELL AT YOU!

So, just like Super Nanny taught me, I made good on my warning. No books. That part was easy. What wasn’t easy was the crying, begging, ripping off clothes, and eventually taking away two of her favorite books that followed.

Discipline sucks. I wish I could be more eloquent about it, but seriously, it’s the worst. This witch lady who takes children’s books away from them and once barred my daughter from Sunday school because that was the one thing she was excited about- that isn’t me. Never in a million years did I imagine me, as a parent, asking my child, “Are we going to do this the easy way or the hard way?” and then dumping cups of water over her head while she screams like I’m pulling off her toenails instead of rinsing the shampoo out of her hair.

When it comes to parenting, there is an easy way and a hard way, and choosing to discipline your child is by far the harder choice. It’s necessary, I know, because I’ve taught kids who have seemingly never heard the word “No” in their lives, but (expletive of your choice) it’s exhausting.  Discipline is beyond poop, beyond throw-up, beyond middle of the night feedings, beyond being forced to watch weird, borderline-creepy kids’ shows, the least fun aspect of parenting. Because, as Maggie tells me, “You a bad guy, mommy.”And who wants to hear their kid tell them that?

Recently, my husband and I finally admitted that we can’t do everything. (Shocking, I know.)
Completely overwhelmed by full-time jobs, two kids who deposit toys, shoes, and occasionally bodily fluids in every corner of our house, and the growing realization that as hard as we will it, the universe will never randomly supply us with more hours in a day, we hired a cleaning lady.

What? I like him, he licks me. No problem.

But that’s not really what this post is about. As awesome as it is to walk into the house once every other week and breathe in the aroma of industrial strength cleaner – because yes, the first time she came to clean, she texted me to say that she wasn’t satisfied with my tub and would need to bring something stronger next time – and feel like Ceci can roll around on the living room carpet without collecting a layer of dog hair, let’s be honest: It takes about five minutes for the mess to resurface.

It’s weird; I don’t think I ever used to be anal, but at this point in my life, there’s not a whole lot I can control. I spend my days with hormonal 7th graders and my time away from work with two of the most temperamental people I’ve ever encountered, plus a baby. (Did you catch that one? What a zinger. I got my husband good!) Consequently, I end up focusing a lot of my attention on the mess. Sometimes it feels like if I can put everything back in its proper place, I’ll feel a little bit saner. God knows I don’t feel sane when I walk into my home feeling like an alpaca carrying bags full of school work, lunches, gym clothes, and bottles that need to be washed, plus a baby carrier that weighs about 87 pounds, and I immediately have to get people fed and try to find a place for all of the crap that I just brought into my house.

But anyway. I have spent countless hours wandering around my house trying to clean up, getting distracted in each messy room that I enter, while Maggie tugs at my sleeve asking me to play with her and Ceci tries to eat some unidentifiable item she just found on the floor. And still, even when I know that my kids need me, it’s hard to just let the mess go.

I’m aware enough to know what this whole issue is really about. I realize that my life will probably never be orderly again, if it ever was. I know that I am fighting a losing battle, yet the impulse to clean up never really leaves me. So what is there to do? Feel forever unsatisfied with my environment? Get the cleaning lady to come more often? Once a week? Every day? Would I feel saner then?

And this is why we don’t use our tupperware for storing food.

Acceptance, I find, is a difficult step to take, especially when it comes to our own imperfections. I will never be able to do it all. I will always fall short in some respect. But even people in my situation, who often question their soundness of mind, (and I’m talking about parents, in case anyone didn’t pick up on that), have enough sense to ask themselves, “What is going to define me? My failure to vacuum under the kitchen table after my child eats graham crackers, or the way my daughter uses her manners to ask for another bowl of cereal? My inability to keep track of dirty socks, or the fact that I’ve figured out how to get the baby to fall asleep without crying?”

The mess will always be there, but let’s face it, parenthood is a messy business. So what if Ceci’s butt always has a film of dirt on it, since she refuses to crawl and drags her bottom across the floor like a human Swiffer? That’s what we have daily loads of laundry for. So what if there are Maggie-prints on every window in our home? At least she cares about the world outside.  It’s sometimes hard to see the mess as a blessing, but when I think about who made it, well, what else would it be?

Disclaimer: Since giving birth to Cecilia Marie on July 3rd, almost seven weeks ago, my brain has turned to mush. I’ve wanted so badly to put my first post-baby-number-two blog out into the world, but every time I sit down to write I realize that every word on the screen sounds like someone who is trying desperately not to come off as a sleep-deprived maniac. Therefore, I give up. I embrace my temporary dumbness and ask you to please forgive me if my train of thought well, derails. I assure you that I will soon reclaim my ability to think clearly and write sensibly, although the copious amounts of “Say Yes to the Dress” I’ve been watching while on maternity leave with Ceci probably aren’t helping with that.

Now. Remember how I was really, really freaked out about having another baby? Trying to figure out how she would fit into the family dynamic, how her arrival would affect Maggie, how my husband and I, whose time is stretched too thin as it is, would ever arrange our lives to accommodate one more person’s schedule? In some ways, waiting for the second baby was even scarier than the first – it kind of felt like something I was bracing myself for.

So, when Ceci came after a long but relatively easy induction (and an early epidural), and we had introduced her to her big sister, who was faintly suspicious at first but fell quickly in love with “her baby”, and Matt and I were left with this precious, sleeping angel in a quiet hospital room, feeling so much more confident and at peace than we had the first time around, I was surprised, to say the least. During the first few days, I kept waiting for things to feel hard or overwhelming. Then, weeks had passed, and we were doing just fine. I recovered from the delivery much faster than I had with Maggie, mostly because having a two-year-old prevented me from loafing. We went for walks around the neighborhood with Maggie helping push the stroller, and Matt watched Ceci in between feedings so Maggie and I could occasionally get out and spend some time together alone. Anytime a friend or family member would call and sympathetically ask how I was doing, my honest answer was always, “We’re actually doing great.” Having done it all – the diapers, the crying, the nursing, the late hours – once before, it was like riding a bike, minus the anxiety and fear of failure that we had experienced the first time around.

Some of the hardest moments, but also in a way the most beautiful, have been the times when deja vu takes over. An example: very early on, when Ceci was only a couple weeks old, I found myself holding Ceci’s tiny hand while she was nursing. It was a simple gesture of connection with my new baby, but in that moment I was completely and suddenly transported back to a time when I did the same thing with a two-week-old Maggie. She was right there in my arms, my first, the little person who changed my life. Then it passed, and it wasn’t Maggie but Cecilia I was holding, and Maggie was again the big girl she has become: smart, funny, stubborn, and sometimes naughty, but never again all mine the way she was when she was a baby.

It happens this way from time to time, and as the days go by faster and I find myself returning to work in two weeks, I try to remind myself that it’s all temporary. Before Ceci was born I wanted to rush through the newborn stage and the sleeplessness and fogginess that comes with it. But this stage, every stage, is over before you know it. There will always be something worth missing, which means that there is always something, more than you realize, worth enjoying.

During my six years as a teacher, one issue I’ve run into fairly often is the child whose parents are utterly convinced that their son or daughter is incapable of being mean, lazy, disrespectful, or inattentive.  If they make a grade below an A, it must be the teacher’s fault. This is the child who fails to take responsibility for forgetting to complete an assignment and who responds, “Well, I wasn’t the only one talking,” when you ask him or her to be quiet. Naturally, most teachers blame this student’s shortcomings on the parents’ belief that their child can do no wrong. At some point, a parent has to do society a favor and realize that no one, not even their sweet little reason for existing, is perfect. They need to stop being their child’s number-one fan and start taking on the role of coach, which has its share of high-fives but can also get downright ugly at times. With that said…

Now that I’m a parent, I can almost see where these people are coming from.  I think Maggie is God’s most amazing creation. She is hilarious, beautiful, a budding genius. 90% of the time when I’m not with her, I want to be talking about her. I’ve taken thousands of pictures, hours of video, and I don’t really ever get sick of looking at or watching them.

I love that she doesn’t known how to lie to me yet. Here’s one exchange that occurred a couple of months ago when I picked her up from daycare:
Me: “What did you do today?”
Maggie: “Went to Ann’s office.” (Ann is the director of the daycare.)
Me: “Why did you go to Ann’s office?”
Maggie: “I bite people.”
Another example, this one from her “art show” at daycare:
Me: “Is that your firetruck? Did you make it?”
Maggie: “Betty made it.” (Betty is her teacher.)
Me: “But you helped, right?”
Maggie: “Not really…”

I love the way she pronounces “music” moogit. I love when she gets our attention by saying, “my mama” or “my daddy” instead of just mama or daddy. I love that everywhere she goes – Sunday school, the Y, daycare, the library – people comment on how much she loves books. I love how she picks up phrases she hears around her and surprises us with them, like examining my earrings and asking me, “They from Target?” I love how excited she is to be a big sister. It completely melted my heart when she was sitting on my lap reading stories one night. “Do you feel the baby kicking you?” I asked. “It not kicking me,” she said. “It giving me a hug!”

I admit it: I am obsessed with my daughter. And I have no doubt that I will be equally obsessed with the new baby as soon as he or she arrives (two weeks, people!). So I kind of get it. For most parents, kids are the best thing that ever happened to them. They seem to undo all the dumb things we’ve done in our lives and give us something pure to focus our energy on. But just because my babies are perfect to me, does that mean they’ll never have anything to learn? Or never say something nasty that they shouldn’t say? Or never “bite people”? Adoring my daughter is important, but the time is approaching even now when it will be even more important to teach her that she is not the only person in the world, not more special or deserving than anyone else– even if my warped parental sensibilities are screaming the opposite every step of the way.

First off, this post title does not refer to poop, though admittedly that is what I have been feeling like lately. The school year is winding down (six full days and two half-days to go!), and I am TIRED. I remember being tired when I was pregnant with Maggie, particularly at the beginning, but this type of exhaustion is new to me. During my planning periods I have to fight the urge to put my head on my desk and use the stack of papers waiting to be graded as a pillow. When I get home after picking up Maggie, I manage to get her something to eat and then sit at the kitchen table with her for as long as humanly possible while Matt gets home and cleans up after me. I feel like a perfect example of the law, “An object at rest stays at rest.” Motion of any kind is rough these days.

Meanwhile, I have been racking my brain for subjects to blog about, but my brain is pretty much on the same page as my body. It doesn’t follow basic commands. Coherent thoughts get sucked into the vortex of fatigue. The fact that I’m currently stringing words into sentences is a miracle. However, I don’t want to lose the momentum I gained when I first started writing, so what follows is the best I can come up with:

Number Two. The second pregnancy. The second child. It’s a topic I’ve been meaning to write about for quite some time, but devoting a blog post to it is admitting that it’s actually happening. Just saying it kind of gives me a panic attack. As of today, I am five weeks and one day from my due date. Clearly, it IS happening. Change is imminent. And I am freaking out.

I don’t mean to alarm anyone with my mental state. My children, my husband, and I will get through this transition unscathed. There’s no need to alert the authorities that a crazy lady is about to give birth. I absolutely want this child, and chances are good that I’ll go through this all yet another time after this. If  it were possible to pour out all of my anxieties about number two and sift through them, there’s definitely excitement mixed in there as well. I am dying to meet this little person and see who he or she is going to be.

That said, this second time around I know what lies ahead of me in the coming weeks and months, and only a truly crazy person would look forward to it. Labor? Seriously, does anyone WANT to do that again? My first time around I was dead-set against getting an epidural. I recall my words sounding something like this: “This is what my body was made for. I can do this on my own.” We bought scented oils and a back massager and made a labor playlist for my iPod. After about 24 hours of hard labor at home, though, my beautiful feminist sentiments had crumbled and an epidural became my new best friend. I still smile wistfully when I think about that needle entering my back, and I look forward to greeting my old friend again this time around.

Then there’s the whole newborn stage. When I was pregnant with Maggie, I attended a school holiday party where I oohed and ahhed over a colleague’s five-week-old son. “Yeah…” she said, in response to my gushing. “It’s not my favorite stage.” At the time, I thought it was a slightly awful thing to say, but now, comparing my articulate, relatively independent, mobile two-year-old to the emotionally unreachable yet completely dependent blob she was as a newborn, how can I blame her? Up until Maggie was at least six months old, I was covered in pee, poop, or spit-up often enough that I stopped bothering with a change of clothes in between and just waited until bedtime. Am I particularly excited about returning to that state of being?

Yes, there are certain things that I can count on experiencing as the mother of a newborn, but some of my panic also comes from the unknowns of adding another human being to my family. As awesome as Maggie is, she can be a handful- really, two hands full. How am I going to handle a tantrum with a baby hanging from me? How am I going to get both kids to go to sleep and still leave time for me and Matt?

The answer, obviously, is that I’ll figure it out. People generally do. But one piece of advice for you, reader: When it’s three in the morning and I’m calling or texting or posting in complete desperation and sleep deprivation, it’s probably best not to tell me that. Crazy people don’t usually respond well to sound logic.