Tag Archives: mommyrage

May 19, 2014 · 4:59 pm

Fifty Things I Do In A Day.

Someone recently asked me what I do all day. The stress was on the letter “what”, like what (on earth) do you do all day? I didn’t think he was worthy of an answer.

Here it is though. For you guys, who stop by and read me! Here are the fifty things I do in one typical day. If you can’t relate to them, that’s OK. At another time, I probably would not have either. This is for those who decided to lean out!

Here goes..

  1. Wakeup, get the kids ready, shove food down their reluctant mouths, drop them to the bus stop/school.
  2. Come back home. Have a cup of tea. Try and read the morning paper while thinking of a plausible excuse to not have lunch with your husband’s Taiji (aunt)
  3. Cleaning lady saunters in. Attempt to get the house cleaned. Disapprove of her cleaning techniques. Pull around the furniture to prove your point. Dust the foot mat (because no one else will)
  4. Attend to the doorbell. Sign for a courier. Put the magazine in the will-read-soon pile.
  5. Come back in. Door bell again. It’s the garbage collector. The trash has not yet been tied up. Now it’s time to give the maid a sermon on the merits of preparedness.
  6. Come back to read the paper. No better luck, door bell again. Take the milk man’s bill. Tell him to return for the money. You can’t give a definite time.
  7. Think about lunch. What, possibly, could the kids eat without a fuss? It’s summer, there’s not much. Sigh. Wish you were in some office, doing some real work, talking to some real people. Miss the vacuous office banter that can be so uplifting.
  8. Somehow work out a lunch menu that leaves out the spineless summer veggies like ghiya, tinda, kaddu, karela, parmal and tori (beats any analyst report, I can tell you that). Inform the maid of your brainwave (egg curry). Try and be calm when she tells you that you’re out of oil.
  9. Rush to pick up the phone. It’s the tele-sales lady. Be firm in your refusal. You don’t want the magical Mutual Fund that will put you on the path to financial freedom.
  10. Call the electrician. The AC has been gone for three days. Inquire about its whereabouts. Call him eight more times before he picks up and you explode.
  11. No you can’t be calm. It’s freaking 42 degrees (107 degrees Fahrenheit)
  12. Taiji (aunt) is calling. You don’t have a plan. Panic. Don’t take the call.
  13. Think of something. Call her back and express deep dismay for missing the lunch. Yes, you don’t work, sure you could’ve come. Next time. Pucca promise.
  14. It’s noon. You haven’t had a bath, the op-ed is lying open, the maid is hollering for oil, the driver has not turned up, the cleaning lady is sulking and it’s hot as hell.
  15. You shut your eyes and take a deep breath
  16. You give the maid money for the oil. And, oh, while you’re on the topic, the rice, butter, chocolate spread and cheese is almost finished as well. So are the organic eggs that are sold at the far-away grocery store. You hand her a wad of notes. She can walk to the market and get regular eggs, you’ll survive.
  17. Now you can’t go for a bath because the maid is out and no one will be able to attend to the door. Some eight more couriers will arrive by the end of the day. Cash on delivery is a good idea when you’re ordering something, no so great when you are in the bath and the guy arrives wielding your precious packet.
  18. While you wait for the maid, you read the paper. The cleaning lady now wants to clean where you are safely and most comfortably ensconced with the remains of your op-ed. She’s, however, in no mood to hang around. Fruit-fly genetics can wait.
  19. You get up with a huff, but not a very irate one. You do want her to show up again tomorrow.
  20. You move to another spot, finish off the op-ed.
  21. The maid returns. Now you can have a bath. Hop in and hop out.
  22. It’s almost time for the school-bus. But you have 15 minutes. Too early to leave, too late to start doing anything substantial. You wonder if you should read the article you abandoned yesterday or answer that e-mail. By the time you locate the paper, you’ve lost eight minutes. Now you can’t read with attention for fear of losing track of time and getting late for the bus stop. So you leave seven minutes early. Then you twiddle your thumb at the bus stop and wonder why you didn’t carry the paper with you.
  23. Bus arrives, kids are home. What remains of the day can now be written off.
  24. There’s some pressing issue with the homework. We need ribbons and stencils. Can’t we do without them? Use something else? Do they have to be ribbons? No, no and yes.
  25. Sigh. Wish for frivolous office talk. If only..
  26. It’s Tuesday. It’s piano day. She’s not practiced. There’s going to be a scene.
  27. Yup. There’s a scene.
  28. That out of the way, you can now leave for the piano class. Ok, you promise not to say anything to the teacher. For the last time.
  29. Piano over. Homework beckons. Ribbons. Right.
  30. Ribbons and veggies bought in one shot. Stencils were bought last week.
  31. Everything is under control. We should make bed-time without a shout. Seems too good to be true.
  32. It is. Turns out we also need chart paper. And glue. Not the regular glue. The real one. Whatever that is.
  33. You explode. Defense is prompt. How was she to know we don’t have chart paper and real glue?
  34. Back to the market.
  35. Dinner will now be rushed. Not very conducive to overall peace.
  36. Somehow the project is done. Dinner is wolfed down. Beds are made. Stories are read. Two are ready to sleep, one is not.
  37. Negotiations and (no, not love songs. You wish) more negotiations.
  38. Sigh.
  39. So you put the others to bed. She stays up. Day is not over. You wish.
  40. You emerge, half-asleep, from the dark room. You put up your feet and try to read. She wants to talk about school. So you do.
  41. You put down your book. She tells you stories. This part you love.
  42. Husband returns, tired, from work
  43. Should we eat? She’s not asleep?
  44. You eat. She sits with you, fighting sleep. The other two asleep in their beds.
  45. Why can’t she sleep in time?
  46. You don’t have an answer. You’re tired.
  47. Dinner over. Now she wants to sleep. You don’t wan to go back in to put her to bed.
  48. There’s a scene.
  49. You hold your ground. You need your downtime.
  50. What exactly is that?

 

 

 

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March 4, 2014 · 6:24 am

The Fights and the Make-Ups

My older daughter and I seem to be arguing a lot these days. Actually, it’s been more than these-days, it’s been going on for, well, if I think about it, since she was about four. I guess since she found her will and realized that she could assert it (it starts way too early).

So the other day I was trying to put some eye drops for her. She’s got something called Blepharitis, which is the swelling of the eyelids, usually happens in kids with dandruff, but in her case it’s not the reason (we could not arrive at one). It’s mild and can be treated with some drops and, believe it or not, shampooing of the eyelids! Now, every morning, as we try and make the most of each minute, as the school-bus looms large over the household, we have to shampoo her eyelids. And, as always, it’s not as simple as it sounds. Try waking up an eight year old at six in the morning and then scrubbing her eyes with shampoo (anyone who has washed a child’s face can tell you how they are about putting soap on their faces). So she screams, of course, and I try and tell her all the parental stuff about how it’s for her own good, which, she does not care about. All she wants is for me to stop lathering her eyes. There’s no magic, I tell her. If she can’t allow this then she loses all right to complain about hurt in her eyes. I wish it worked that way, but it doesn’t.

Anyway, somehow we managed to make the bus. She waved from the window but had that I-don’t-like-what-you-did look. I chirpily waved back and saw that the twins were tying to make her smile. Next battle at 4:00, I thought. And man was I right. She came back from school, we had little time because she had to go for her tennis lesson and I had to put eye drops before that (because after the lesson there were more drops to be put). So after her snack, I announced that the drops had to be put. She revolted and I lost it. It’s for your own good, I repeated my morning words. She wanted to be left alone, which, of course, was too much to ask. I did the opposite. After trying everything – from sweet goading to open threats (ya, I know) – I had to pin her down and put them forcefully (in my defense, the last time she had Blepharitis we had to abandon the treatment half-way because she didn’t let me put the drops and I ran out of steam, so it reoccurred and this time it was worse).

That was that. She was very upset, as was I. She told me that I hurt her hand, I told her I had no choice. I walked away looking hurt, which I was. She gazed at the ceiling (a recent habit she’s acquired) and held back her tears. I was not going to make-up, of that I was sure. She sensed my mood and about five minutes later, gave me this (rolled up like a scroll)

The front and back of the note:
Image

Image

Most of our fights end with notes and apologies. She wrote this one hurriedly because she knew she’d upset me for no reason. Then she said “mama, can we forget that this fight happened? Please, let’s be happy” It made me think. A child reacts very differently to an argument than the mother. She took our fight to mean that she and I were not happy. For her it was vital that I forget the unpleasantness that had occurred, however fleeting or trivial.

I sat her down and explained to her that fights didn’t  mean we were not happy. It shook me up to think that she was sad to an extent that she wanted me to erase all that happened and pretend that we’d not fought. I wished I had been more patient, but in this case it was difficult because she was resisting all efforts to put the drops and since her infection had reoccurred, I was at my wit’s end.

I am still unsure of what I could’ve done differently. But it made me sad to think that she took our fight so literally.

And to think that the teenage years have still to come. It’s going to be fun, three teenage daughters at the same time. Can anything prepare me for that? I doubt it.

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May 9, 2013 · 1:55 pm

What career advice will you give to your daughters?

When I was growing up all I heard my mother say was that we had to make something of ourselves; that we must “stand on your own feet” – a term that Indian parents love to repeat, ad nauseum, or at least they did when my parents were in the stage of child-rearing that I am today.  Hindi films extolled the virtues of the phrase with lachrymose on-screen mothers telling their kids to “become something in life”.

So, it was ingrained in me very early – parents, cinema, et all – that I had to make something of myself. Stories of didactic brilliance, against all odds, were fed to us on a regular basis. The boy who sat under a street lamp and topped the national level civil services exam was the role model who we had to get inspired from, if not emulate.

So, my question is this. And, just to clarify, this is not to assign blame or say that my life would’ve been different had my mother prepared me for what lay ahead. But what I want to know is why no one told me one day I’ll have to make a choice – work or home? I spent years thinking, studying, working towards a career and then, whoosh. Before I knew it, I became that Stay At Home Mom, wondering if someone out there wants to hire a freelancer who is willing to work harder than “regular employees”, whose only limitation is that she cannot leave home for hours on end.

Why was I told that I must “stand on my feet” when that is exactly what I am not being able to do, whatever the term means?

The question that could be thrown back to me is – who told you to have kids? Or, did you not think about who would raise them? Well, not really. I mean, you reach a point when you want kids and you feel you’ll be able to figure to out as you go along. After all, the world has kids and juggles. My mom did. Couldn’t be that hard, right?

It’s not hard. It’s just life-changing. For those who can strike that magical (but it so eluded me) work-life-balance, I sound like a whiner (don’t like that term, my blog name notwithstanding). But I am not. I am asking a real question; more because I want to say the right things to my daughters. I do not want to lead them down a merry path only to have them reach a dead end later, or worse, to reach that wretched fork in the road where they’ll stand and dither and fall into the deepest quandary, the answer to which they will seek for the rest of their lives.

Should I tell them that they must work hard and dream big, but that one day they may have to let go of that dream, or a family? Or, should I tell them to be realistic and choose a path that will allow them to strike a balance between work and domestic life? So it’s better, say, to become a writer, academician (but wait, not dean, that’s time consuming), entrepreneur, teacher, consultant (so many women I know now “consult on a freelance basis) as opposed to any other profession, enriching as it might be, but which threatens to take them away from their homes for long passages of time?

What’s the answer? Is there one?

I want to, just because it’s sort of relevant, tell you this story. Make what you want of it.

I have a friend who was brilliant in college – the sort we thought would lead the way and we’d just follow. At 21 she got married. No one could understand it. One fine day, she just married this guy her parents had chosen for her. Just like that.

It turned out that her mother was this control freak who had figured life out and had laid out a plan for her daughter. She got this rich guy to marry her. By the time she was 23 she’d had her first and only child. She then, needled by her mother, did an MBA (while changing nappies – no diapers then). She lived with her parents-in-law (she, husband, kid on the top level; they on the lower, pretty common in India) So, the child was magically brought up while she worked. Long story short, today, she’s only 42 and her son is safely pursuing his undergraduate degree somewhere in the US. She’s on her way to the top management of her company with which she consulted (surprise surprise) for a few years while her son was young.

So, she’s set, as they say in Indian-English parlance. No stopping her till she reaches the top, which is less than an arm’s length away anyway. Her mother always wears this smug expression on her face – she’s something out of a Jane Austen book, where her only aim in life was to settle her daughter, first into a wealthy household by way of marriage and then into successful employment. Both were achieved.

Well, needless to say, I am not that mother. Don’t want to be. Besides, I’ve never asked this friend what she thought about being married so early. She never questioned it, at least not publicly, but I am not sure she loved being coaxed into domesticity while her friends went abroad for further studies, or ones like me who enjoyed single hood till my twenties ended.

I have no doubt about the reaction my kids would have, if I was to, in some wild imagination, turn into that controlling mother with the all-good intention of planning their lives. There’d be a mutiny, to put it mildly.

So back to the original question. What do I say to my daughters?

I ask, but I think I know the answer.

I am going to let them figure it out for themselves. Limiting their imagination right now for some future dilemma seems unnecessary and frankly foolish. They’ll cross the bridge when they come to it.  Hopefully, I’ll be living on the ground floor, looking after their babies..

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April 24, 2013 · 5:56 pm

Ok, so the angst is back. And this time, it’s brought Shelly and Frost..

Does it ever go away? I mean completely go away – as in, never to return, go away? I think not. It’s a bit like psoriasis, you can suppress it, but it will eventually come back, if only to go away again.

And, this is the angsty age anyway – by age, I mean both my age (40, sigh) and the age we live in (Kalyug, or the age of downfall, as it’s called in Hinduism). So the combination is pretty crappy. I know this is a bit of a pessimistic take on a pretty perfect life, but that’s the way I am feeling right now.

Why? Not sure. I have all the makings of a great life – three wonderful kids, a nice, big house (nightmare to maintain), a loving husband (trapped in the wheel of life, would ideally like to quit work but that’s unimaginable with three kids in junior school), supportive parents (old, frail and alone), caring siblings (sister has been menopausal pretty much for the past ten years), an affluent lifestyle (thank God, no really)..You know, all the ingredients that one needs to be happy.

And yet, I have the angst. Does this prove, then, that human beings can never be truly happy? As Shelley writes  in ‘To A Skylark’ (Gosh I still remember this, bless you Miss. Mehta, my English teacher in the year of the Lord – 1988):

We look before and after,
And pine for what is not:
Our sincerest laughter
With some pain is fraught;
Our sweetest songs are those that tell of saddest thought.

Good Lord, I am quoting Shelly. I think I need help. That, or maybe I need to get out of the house and do something that does not involve sorting fights about who snatched whose pen first, or being told that life was not fair, or calling the plumber to fix a pipe, then calling him back four hours later. Maybe I need to be talking to adults during the day for a change, and adults who are not the help or, worse, my mother-in-law, whose perennial problem is trying to work her iPad. Yes, I now have the itch to get out of the house. And I can’t.

To be honest, I’ve always had that itch (take it from me, every women who gives up work does) but now it’s becoming unbearable. You know you’ve been home too long when you tell your seven year old about the sacrifices you’ve made for her and expect her to understand the magnitude of your decision. Worse, I now say this to my three and a half year old twins. Of course, to them I say it more like a threat – “mama will go to office if you don’t let her work”. Again, I expect their little minds (quite capable, might I add, of impressive analytical reasoning when convenient) to take me seriously and leave me and my computer, and my iPad, alone.

Do I succeed? Do I really need to answer that?

So, the angst grows. Husband has his own angst, so I don’t dump mine on him. Also, mine sometimes involves gripes about his mother (we live together) and that’s never a great topic, to put it mildly. To be fair to him, he does not talk to her much either, he’s got quite the male, if I shut my eyes it will go away, attitude towards his mother and my relationship. Well, it does not go away and every so often blows up in his face, leading to more angst all around.

Anyway, coming back to the current anxiety in question, I am not sure why it’s bonked me on the head without warning. No, it’s not PMS. Well, unless, unless, PMS now takes over half the month? Hmm, possible; forties have lots of surprises and I have been craving chocolate lately..

But, the reason this has caught me by surprise is that I would’ve thought that now my restlessness would wane a bit – twins are in school, I’ve started to work from home a little (though that’s hard to do with the motley group around me) and we even had that splendid, splendid holiday (just husband and I) which I actually described as honey-mooney (blush, blush). So, then? Why all this fretfulness about what if I’d taken up that job?

Not sure I want to answer that. Somewhere deep down, I may know why, but I’d rather let that lie where it is. Tugging it out will bring up other stuff and before we know it, I’ll be quoting Frost.

Well, what the hell. Here it is:

‘The Road Not taken’

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth.

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May 9, 2012 · 8:50 am

Time to listen to the body, and unfortunately, to the husband too!

My husband has been telling me for a while to calm down, to not get stressed about little things, to learn to take things as they are and not look for perfection in everybody and everything. He’s been warning me of medical repercussions, which, according to him, are just a matter of time.

I, needless to say, have not been too receptive to such candid feedback, which I see as a bit unwarranted. Predictably, I’ve countered his observations by insisting that since he is not in the house, it’s easy for him to tell me to let it be. After all, if I let it be, nothing will happen, nothing. The dinner will not be on time, the daughter will not finish her schoolwork (or eat properly, drink her milk, get her hair combed, etc etc), the laundry will not be done in time, or, worse, if allowed to get done without my fine supervision, it’ll be done all wrong, with the red sock making its way into the machine and turning all his clothes baby pink, the car will not get cleaned in time for him to leave for work, the driver will not show up in time, till I’ve called him a zillion times and he’s claimed to have been five minutes away for the last half hour, and all the rest of it .I have to yell if I need to get anything done, otherwise it will not happen. That’s the truth, really.

Also, I make it a point, at the end of any discussions of this nature, to point out that I wasn’t always this way, that this is something I turned into and I don’t like it any more than he does.

But, the hard fact is, he’s right. (how I hate that – that “I told you so” look!) My head has been reeling with attacks of migraines, of the worst sort. I’ve had them before; it’s something that’s been handed down to me as a legacy from them forefathers. Yup, it’s in the genes. You can escape everything, but you cannot escape your genes – not a chance. I thought I had though, but hitting forty is life changing in more ways than one. Your body starts to tell you things, things you don’t like but have to stomach. And them genes, they decide to come out of their dormancy and say “aha, so you thought we’d spared you? nope, not a chance in hell!” (You know that box that you fill in a health form – “family history of” – that box starts to mean something). You think about the blood pressure your mum has, the stent in your father’s heart, the rheumatoid arthritis in your family, and you take a deep breath. Then you think about combat measures. How long can you delay the inevitable? How long before your genes get the better of you? You get into survival mode (for the sake of your kids, you better) Yoga? That’s got to help you. Isn’t it the magical answer to everything? That and a host of other stuff like: low salt, low fried foods, low alcohol, sleep in time (early to bed..) I can almost feel my genes smirking saying “you want to beat us? Go right ahead dear, live this way if you really want!”

Anyway, I digress. Point is, migraines have officially made their entry into my life. I’ve seen my sister suffer from them and, of course, have lectured her no end about the stress that she creates in her life (it’s always so simple to solve other people’s lives isn’t it? I mean all you need to do sis is blah blah and blah and boom problem solved!) Now I am eating my big fat words and holding the receiver five inches from my ear when I hear such useless advice from my sister and mother. (why, why, why did I tell them????)

So now it’s time for resolutions, again. I think it’s time I listened to my body, or tried to at any rate. Am not going to change overnight (if at all) unless everyone around me does! But I can try, which is something I am willing to do (again, for the kids, though they won’t see that. It’s weird really – I yell because I care about them and now I will stop yelling because I care about them and don’t want to deprive them of a mother and want to be around till they are on their way in life – whenever that is!)

What I will and will not do: Will try and not yell (ok I am going to try because sometimes yelling is therapeutic), won’t get stressed about the little things, will meditate (this I find hard to do), will sleep on time, not do any crazy diets, look at the positive sides of everything (ok, that’s a bit of a tall order – maybe not everything, but most things).

In a rare moment of confession I will admit that the husband is right about the potential risk of harm from all the angst. I have to find a way to lessen the stress – I know. I am going to try. The migraine was an eye opener of sorts. It was nothing serious but the pain put me out for two days and I am not going to let that happen again. I will take his advice, but will I tell him that and give him ammunition for the future? Not a chance.

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March 20, 2012 · 2:38 pm

Work From Home. Really? How Do You Do That?

I’ve been trying to work from home. It’s a tiny little step, but am trying to take one step at a time and it’s hard. It’s hard not because I am not disciplined enough to do it (OK, that too, but that I can work on) It’s the disciplining of the people around me that’s tough to do. The trouble is that everyone is so used to coming to me with the little problems that I cannot have a moment of peace when I can sit and write (yes, have taken up some writing work). So, a lot of my time is spent in telling everyone to let me be when I am at my desk. And, it’s not the kids alone who need to be told this.

Before I launch into the angst and the rest of it, I feel almost obliged to say something. Which is this: I know I am fortunate to be in a position where I could choose to be at home with the kids. A LOT of women don’t have that option. As a fellow mommy blogger recently pointed out that I didn’t have to leave the kids at home and go to work, something she had to do and hated doing. For all my angst about staying at home, at the end of the day I did it because I wanted to and because I could.

But, having said this, what I will add is that maybe I would’ve gone back to work earlier, if I had a support structure to depend upon, where I could leave the kids and work without worry (not without guilt though, THAT never goes away) . But I didn’t and I decided to become a SAHM (have given in to that word/abbreviation).

So, now that the girls are a little older and there is some semblance of sanity, I have decided to work, a little.

Let me tell you what today was like. The morning started with the pipe of the wash-basin in my bathroom breaking. So I called the plumber, he was busy, his wife’s new-born niece had just got jaundice, so he was at the hospital. I could hardly press him to hurry. As I was talking to him, my maid, unaware of the broken pipe opened the tap. The next twenty minutes were spent mopping the floor. I didn’t have to do it, but had to make sure the kids didn’t go rushing into the bathroom to inspect damages, something they LOVE to do.

After avoiding slipping and breaking a leg, when I was settling into my chair to pound away at my keyboard, the electrician called. There seems to be some grave wiring issue that needs to be looked into urgently. He asked what would be a good time to visit. I gave him a time. Eight hours later, he’s still to show up.

The plumber called as I was ending the call with the electrician. He had decided to resume work in the afternoon. Great I said. But, he would need money for the pipe, so would come in a while to collect that (he asked me if I could get it, which, of course, was not my idea of shopping. Besides I had work to do) So, knowing well that he was going to charge me more than he payed for it, I told him to get it.

OK, I said. Now let’s do some writing. My cook then decided to ask me some irrelevant question about food. I told him to decide, only to have him give me options to pick from. I turned from my desk and reminded him what I’d told him a few days ago when he’d disturbed me while working. “That I should come to you only if the house was on fire” he nodded merrily. I asked him if the house was on fire. He shook his head and informed me that the real reason why he came to me was because there was no oil in the house for cooking.

Now, this seemingly innocuous declaration sent me into a tizzy. I lost it. I know it was an overreaction. Anyway, long story short, I gave him the money and gulped a glass of cold water and sat down to work. This is when the kids decided to invade the room. There had been a fight, of course, and it was impossible for me to decide who did what and when. All three looked upset and had a side of the story to tell. Sigh. I took a deep breath, and tired to solve it, which, needless to say, was impossible. The twins were not in a re conciliatory mood, to say the least. The older one, who has just turned six and reacts to most situations with a sulk, just walked away telling me that I was not being fair (why do schools have spring break, again?)

After the matter was amicably settled, with a bit of television thrown in, I returned to my desk. I’d lost my thread. I stared at my computer blankly. Nothing. So I got up, had a bath and returned to write. Just then the bell rang. The plumber had arrived.

There’s more to this story. But you get the drift. I turned Skype off, didn’t want my editor asking me how much I’d written. He didn’t want to know..

Ah, well. At least I’ll make history for having had the shortest job ever.

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July 5, 2011 · 5:59 pm

Five Things Motherhood Has Taught Me.

Thanks Forever Mother for tagging me in this and making me think.

What has motherhood taught me? Agh. So much. But, here’s the thing. When I respond to a question like this on my blog, there is, almost immediately, a conflict in my mind – between what I think motherhood has taught me and what it really has. You know, we have a perception about ourselves, which is not always accurate, but we like to believe facts about ourselves anyway! And a question like this makes me stop and think about perception and reality. Agh. The truth is not always good!

Anyway, here’s a sincere attempt:

1. Children are born selfish. The first instinct is of survival and self fulfillment. It is for the parents to teach them about sharing and giving. Ever tried to take a toy away from a two year old? What did that result in? You know what I mean..

2. Having kids has taught me something about my own parents – that people are not perfect and we expect our parents to be. It’s only when you become one you realize that your parents are human too.

3. Children do lie, though they do it without malice. So don’t always believe yours, listen to the other kid too..

4. Every child is different, so comparison is really not a positive thing.

5. And now for some emotion! Above all, motherhood has taught me to thank God for my happy life. No matter how much I rant and rave, I am fortunate. Very fortunate. And I don’t mean only economically. I mean it in every sense of the word…

Has motherhood changed me?

Like hell it has. Some for the better and some for the worse. Honestly.

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