I was never much of a diarist. Even as a self-absorbed teenager, I was no Pepys. Well-meaning people would buy me those little locking daily diaries as birthday presents. They all held such promise, and with each new one would come a resolution to write in it every day. Their pink or red or blue covers, their gilt-edged dated pages, and shiny brass locks with the minuscule keys beckoned me, “Write me, write me!” And I would dutifully answer, “Of course, of course!” I would pop the clasp and open the book, the sharp tang of vinyl newness filling my nose. The pages were so white and crisp with the barest hint of roughness at the edges. But I could never fulfill the promise of each new day, a fresh new page. And what to write? At 12 years old, there was precious little to write about. Nothing I cared to set down for posterity anyway.

I still occasionally find these pathetic relics, discarded like half-chewed bones. I read through them, hoping to find some kind of keen insight into the child I was, but they are void of any meaning. At 12, and 13, and 14, well, pretty much every year of my life ending in -teen, I was a sad specimen. Tiny, pasty, weird, clumsy (but you knew that), adolescence was hell. And I sure didn’t want to write any of that crap down. What was there to say, “Got tied to the jungle gym by my shoelaces, again.” “Told a really funny joke, nobody laughed because I was the one who told it.” “Got picked on for being me, again.” “Ate lunch with the pathetic little band of other outsiders that have become my one refuge in an increasingly hostile environment.” “Mom told me how awful my skin is, again.” (I wish to state for the record, Mother, that I have always had nice skin, teenagers get zits. I still get complements on my skin to this very day, little thanks to you. Yes, I’m bitter much.) “Dad gave me another book on how evil everything I want to do is.” “Am considering a descent into madness to stave off the rising tide of desperation.”

What I ended up writing were things like: what kind of underpants I had on, and how I wished I could be taller. Or the elaborate fantasies I built up about the incredible, graceful, beautiful girl that I wasn’t. As I got older, I would fill little notebooks with pieces of the real me. I realized the diaries were too obvious, too cliched. And as a writer, I despise cliche. And my mother was not to be trusted. She could’ve searched my room for contraband all she liked and I wouldn’t have cared, but there was no way I was going to expose my thoughts to her. The notebooks were nondescript, no one could’ve guessed the tortured thoughts they contained. Just the usual teenage angst, I suppose, but as negative emotions on my part were not tolerated, doubtless those writings would’ve gotten me a visit with a doctor. And to be honest, I was pretty harsh on my parents in those notebooks. These blogs of mine, these are now my little notebooks. But now, I don’t care if my parents read my writings, not that I think they do.

I have said before that my parents made many mistakes with me, all parents do. It’s truly unavoidable. The only thing we can do for our kids is try to learn from the past and not make the same mistakes our parents made. We need to make all new ones. My father was stern and scary and not very involved in my activities. He was, however, overly-involved with the church (and as scary as Daddy seemed, I was jealous of that stupid church!). So I joined in a lot of church activities myself, thinking that maybe he’d find some worth in me. That is a mistake I will not make; if you put religion before your children, you’re doing it wrong.

My mother, a captive of her own miserable upbringing, could not bring herself to be supportive on a day-to-day basis. I can count on one hand the times that I felt she was actually “in my corner”. I think it all goes back to my great-grandfather. He died well before I was born, but by all accounts, he was a vicious, brutal man-at least to my grandmother. My grandmother, in turn, married perhaps unwisely to escape. There weren’t many options for poor women, during the 30’s and 40’s, in rural Oklahoma. Maybe she shouldn’t have married, maybe she wasn’t particularly suited to mothering. Whatever it was, my mother never learned how to be nurturing or supportive.

After she finished high school, my mother wanted to go on to nursing school but my grandmother wouldn’t hear of it. Gammie didn’t have a very high opinion of nurses; actually, she didn’t have a very high opinion of anyone. At her mother’s insistence, my own mom went through some kind of clerical training, which she hated. When I was younger, there were two possible tracks I wanted to take for my future: writer or doctor. My parents never took my writing seriously, never encouraged that talent. When I wanted to go into journalism, my mother insisted that I take typing class, because I would never be able to support myself as a writer.

So, when I wished to pursue my other main interest, science, and go into medicine, my mother informed me that my high school grades weren’t good enough. I would never get into medical school. Because my high school GPA was only 3.2. The sad thing is, I listened to them, to her. I let them affect my future by believing in their low opinion of me. After years of feeling like a constant source of disappointment to them, I managed to disappoint myself.

I get it now, my grandmother signed up for a life she didn’t want to escape her childhood. Maybe to punish my mother for that life, Gammie thwarted her hopes for the future. My mother, having never been taught how to be a supportive parent, and having never gotten over what Gammie did to her, thwarted my hopes for my future. I do not, for one minute, believe that she did this on purpose. But, since she had never been encouraged in any way, she didn’t know how to encourage me. Perhaps she thought her words would spur me on to do better in school, but they didn’t. I gave up on what I wanted and sort of drifted through my first attempt at college.

Now, here I am, finishing college at nearly 40. I will have achieved my goals by the time my children are old enough to begin exploring their own futures. My mother could not reach beyond the mistakes her mother made and be supportive of me. I will not repeat that mistake, I will not drag this grievous error into yet another generation. My children will have my full support in whatever careers they choose to pursue. Oddly enough, it was having children myself that helped heal some of the dings to my psyche.

By the way, my mother went back to college when she was older than I am now. She’s a successful R.N. and I couldn’t be prouder of her. Way to go, Mom!

Hubby and I got a bit of late start on having kids, not entirely by design. I found out I had PCOS when I was 22, it was mildly disturbing to hear, but not devastating. Yet.

So we knew going in that it may take us a little longer to get pregnant, but we didn’t know it would take us FIVE YEARS!!!!! Five years of tests, treatments, pills, shots, daily temperature taking, procedures, optimism, pessimism, defeatism. I gave up. I didn’t actually tell anyone else that I had given up, but my heart was tired of disappointment and giving up was a hedge against more of it.

Lot’s of other things happened during those five years: changing jobs, buying a house, moving to Chicago, moving back. All the while, I had that giving-up as an insurance policy against getting too invested in all the things that weren’t happening in my body. One of the things that happened in the course of moving was changing doctors.

In Chicago, I starting going to a doctor affiliated with Northwestern Healthcare in Evanston. The beautiful, wonderful, miracle-working Dr. Jennifer Kim put me on Metformin, a drug commonly used to treat Type II diabetes. When we moved back to Oklahoma, my new doctor here approved of that treatment and kept me on it.

Eventually, after some other bumps in the road, we got pregnant with Monkey. It was officially a high-risk pregnancy, but I suffered only the usual annoyances plus gestational diabetes. After the level hormonal playing field of PCOS, I was completely unprepared for the wild fluctuations pregnancy brought. Day after day, I would come home from the bank and tell Hubby, “I hate everyone but you.” And then Monkey was born.

His birth story is one for another day. What is important here is what happened afterwards. If the hormonal changes of the pregnancy threw me around like a rag doll, the ones postpartum were expontentially worse. And I had no idea what was happening to me. You see, no one told me that I was going to be sick and crazy for a year.

Oh, everyone knew about the “baby blues”; and postpartum depression and psychosis had been in the media but I never applied these things to myself. I could get out of bed in the morning and function like a normal person. There were no crying jags, no dramatic weight loss or gain, no sadness. But there was an underlying current of anger. Sleep disturbances come with the territory when there’s an infant the House, so does a loss of interest in sex. I was never suicidal and never thought about harming myself or others; I was just…crazy.

I was so angry at everything and everybody and I did feel worthless. Since the age of 18, I had worked full time, gone to school full time, or some combination of the two. After Monkey, I stayed home, something with which I had no experience. There was this huge chunk of who I used to be that was now missing. And a terrible isolation took over. With Hubby at work every day, no other SAHM’s that I knew, and only a drooling infant for company, I was starved for grown-up interaction.

Every day, I felt like I was at the bottom of a dry well or that I was twisting in the wind, alone. The twisting-in-the-wind days were bad; I was the last dead leaf left, buffeted about by the weather, clinging desperately to the end of the thinnest, driest branch on the tree. The dry-well days were oh so much worse. I could taste and feel the fetid, stale air like a noxious slime at the back of my throat. That well was too dark and close and deep for even an echo of my voice to escape. And even if I could’ve spoken aloud, I wouldn’t have had the words to describe it. Weeks passed, then months. Monkey turned 1, then Thanksgiving, then Christmas, then the new year all passed me by. Then one day, in the Spring, I came back. The person that I had been before, that I hadn’t been for so long, came back. I could, again, feel the familiar curvature of my mind. The dark, jagged, bitter thing that it had become was gone and once again my mind took on its usual gentle hills and valleys. Oh, my temper was still there, but the fury was gone. I bid adieu to the alien thing that had taken up residence in my brain and never saw it again.

I may never know why I was hit so hard. Perhaps it was the years of trying and disappointment and anticipation, followed by a cold splash of reality. Maybe it was my utter inexperience with hormonal changes due to the PCOS. Whatever it was, I didn’t have those problems with Pumpkin. All my problems with that one happened during the pregnancy. But that, too, is a tale for a different day.

There was one major self-discovery that came of all this: I’m not cut out to be a housewife. Don’t get me wrong, I love my babies and I like being a mom. But that can’t be all that I am. Once, before I had kids, I read one mother’s tale of much the same discovery of self. She came to the realization that she was a better mother to her children when she worked outside the home. Of course, being a pre-parent, I knew absolutely everything there was to know about raising kids. I simply couldn’t understand what she meant. But I do now.

It is an ongoing process, but every day, every semester, I get closer to my goals. And that makes me a happier, better person and mother-day by day and semester by semester.

It is a forgone conclusion that, as a parent, you are going to be saying certain things you otherwise would not. “Not in my house you don’t. Because I said so. Don’t put that in your nose.” And the like. And then you will find yourself saying truly bizarre things. Today I said this: “Take the food out of my boot!”

Hubby and I have both found interesting things in our shoes, mostly toys. But once or twice, I’ve found miniature puddles in my shoes because Pumpkin dumped or spit water in them. Yep, she’s a spitter. Today I caught her in the act, putting a piece of chocolate in one of my boots! At least I caught it before it melted in there. Ick.

First, lest you begin to think otherwise, my husband is a wonderful father. Second, the kids adore their time with Daddy. Third, I love my children but I have no illusions about them, they can try the hardiest of souls.

As a SAHM (stay-at-home-mom), I spend an inordinate amount of time with them, by myself. Weekdays, from too early in the morning until Hubby gets home in the evening, are my shift. Weekends and evenings have always been our tandem-parenting times. But for much of the last two years, I have been going to classes on Saturdays. This semester I added some evenings to my class schedule. I happen to think that these alone times with the kids are good for Hubby, but I think it’s getting to him. Poor man.

You see, he’s outnumbered. There are two of us and we have two kids, so we’re even. Status quo, dead-lock, tie, draw, stand-off. If this makes parenting sound like a battle, good, because often it is. No, more like a thousand little battles. With two parents in the House, we can divide and conquer; when there’s only one of us, they sense the shift in the balance of power. And then like cheetahs cutting a wounded gazelle from the herd, they attack. Now I don’t mean that literally, but they sure do pull out all the stops on the bad behaviors.

The evening class times seem less trying for Hubby, maybe because the cheetahs are exhausted from a full day of cutting Mama from the herd. But he gets the full-on naughty treatment on Saturdays, he literally does not know what to do with them all day. So he comes up with some creative ways to kill time.

While Night School is at the campus closest to our house, my Saturday class is at the campus all the way across town. Hubby and the kids drove me to class (well, Hubby did all the driving) and he told me his plans for the day. First, after dropping me off, they were going to drive all the way back to our part of town to go to his favorite Starbucks ™ and then, drive all the way back to the other side of town to go to the donut shop before heading back to the House. As often happens, plans changed. But he did get the donuts.

I called home during a break, only to hear all hell breaking loose in the background. They were both hopped-up on donuts and the mere act of Hubby talking to me on the phone sent them into a sugar-fueled frenzy. He couldn’t do it, I was talking in one ear and the kids were yelling in the other. He made some noises like trying to get another word in sideways but finally gave up and said he had to go. They cut him from the herd because they had him outnumbered, poor gazelle, I mean guy.

My oldest baby, Monkey, is sick today, poor kid. He got up at 6 o’clock this morning, which is very odd for him. But even stranger is the fact that I got up 5:30. I try to eke in as much sleep possible because every day at least one of the critters decides to be an early bird. Not today, for some reason I decided to stay awake. I read the funny papers online, checked in on some homework I turned in Friday, and checked my e-mail (nothing but spam). Monkey opened his door at 6 and Hubby brought him into the den because he wanted to stay up with Mama.

We watched shows, he drank water, we had a good time. Pumpkin woke up some time later and he begged me  not to get her, that he wanted to snuggle some more. But, alas, she was calling to me, “Mama, come and get me!”

Later, when Hubby was reading books to Pumpkin, Monkey told me he wanted his Mario game. When I got back with the game, he was the very picture of “listless”. Eyes drooping, body visibly sagging, he looked sick. I touched his forehead, warm but not alarmingly so, yet. The thermometer said his temp was just at 100 degrees. Over the course of about an hour, his temperature climbed to over 101 and he said his head hurt, right on top. I sent Hubby on an emergency Children’s Motrin(tm)-run.

While Hubby was at the store, his temp rose some more and he began to cry with the pain in his poor little head. I will never be caught with my pants down again, at least about children’s pain-killer. He kept swiping his arm across the top of his blond head and crying. I curled up behind him and held him, trying to warm up his cold hands and kissing his forehead over and over, wishing for all the world that I could take the “sick” right out of him.

The medicine has started to work and he is now happily watching “Diego” and sucking on the Ring Pop Hubby bought him as a “sorry you’re sick, buddy” treat. He seems to get sicker and more often than Pumpkin, and gives me bigger health scares. At least we haven’t had a visit from the MRSA-monster here at the House. But my sister has and I will have some information about MRSA up soon. But for now, I’m just glad Monkey is feeling better. I hope he gets to go to school tomorrow, I need the break.

Night School is a haven of working adults and parents, a time to spend with other adults, learning exciting, new things. Last night was our first test and some of us finished very early, including me. We gathered upstairs outside our locked lab to wait for the rest of the class. Another mother of small children and I were trading war stories, much to the horror of a couple of the younger women. After several rounds of “terrible pregnancy”, “horrific labor”, “destructive toddlers”, “crayon-eating”, “feces-flinging”, one of the young women told us, “I’m afraid to have kids now”.

We tried to tell her that it’s not as bad as it sounds, but it is. Not that having babies isn’t worth it, it is. But, seriously, only have kids if you have a very strong stomach, it’s not for the timid or the queasy. This is what happens any time two or more mothers, who live in the reality-based community, get together. We bitch about the kids, it’s inevitable.

And my school-mate and I definitely live in the reality-based community. No “it’s always peace, light, and joy in my house” or “my kids are perfect angels, who never talk back or disobey or poop their pants” for us, we tell it like it is. I believe that more people should be able to say that having an infant in the house sucks for just about everyone, or that two-year-olds are tyrannical little monsters with no bowel control, or that pre-schoolers have pretty salty language and bad attitudes, or that sometimes, the lovely man you married makes you want to scream. Marriage and motherhood are hard, trying, and, sometimes, smelly undertakings that take fear-inducing amounts of difficult, unpaid labor. But that’s just on the bad days, there are actually good days, and sometimes there are transcendent days that make everything else fade to almost nothing. It is those transcendent days that keep me going, that keep me from wandering off to become a hermit.

I’m really sorry we scared that young woman, but eventually, should she have kids, she’ll remember that conversation and realize that: 1) we were right and 2) she’s not crazy for feeling the exact same way.

Caution: The following post is about potty-training and the word “poop” will be mentioned. You have been warned.

I am in the belly of the beast, my friends. My 2-year old has entered the terrible phase that resides between a baby being blissfully unaware of what’s going on in her pants and a toddler being ready to begin the potty-training process. She has developed a keen interest in her bodily functions, including an unholy fascination with poop. While she likes to follow me into the bathroom and conduct her very scientific observations about the whole process, she is not really exhibiting a desire to conduct her own personal business in there. She is also, unfortunately, very hands-on about her observations. My 5-year old is fully trained so it’s not like I’m some kind of amateur at this potty-training business. He did his share of pooping on the floor and occasionally hosing the place down, but this kid makes him look like a piker.

She does NOT like the feel of poop in her pants so she takes them off, wherever she happens to be. Unfortunately she doesn’t always do so when on a hard-surface floor, in fact carpeting is her favorite place to leave her gruesome little deposits. By the way, I cannot recommend Resolve Triple Action(tm) spray highly enough, the stuff is amazing! Anyway, her favorite time to, ick, play with poop is right before we have to go someplace. Pick Hubby up from work, take Mama to school, pick brother up at his school-all perfect times to completely mess oneself with one’s own poo, according to the Pumpkin anyway. Last Tuesday, I had to give that child two baths! And the very next day, right before Nana was set to arrive so Mama could go to class, not only did I have to bath her again, I had to strip and clean the inside of her bed. I have heard that some monkeys smear the insides of their cages with their own feces; and I am here to tell you that some toddlers do the very same thing. What started as an attempt at a much-needed nap turned into a disgusting, smelly mess that Mama had to race the clock to clean before Night School.

Luckily I got most of the mess cleaned before class and left instructions for Hubby to finish laundering her bedding while I was gone. Five hours later when I got home, I finished inspecting, and cleaning, her room for random poop pieces. The good news-she has not played with poop since; the bad news-one, it’s only a matter of time and two, now I’m afraid to put her down for a nap.

Everybody congratulate me, I have been declared a Bad Mama by my 5-year old, Monkey! Last night he said to me, “You are a Bad Mama and I’m never gonna love you again. And I’m never gonna like you again. Not ever again.” What atrocious behavior on my part caused these declarations, you may ask? When he tore the metal brad off a manila envelope I took it away from him. And I squeezed past him instead of letting him be a  roadblock. His sister was crying about, well, practically nothing, but I had to find out and he didn’t want me to comfort her. Makes me think he may have had something to do with the aforementioned crying. But Pumpkin calmed down quickly and Monkey wasn’t talking.

He has a serious hogging-all-of-Mama’s-attention problem and hates it when I am not slavishly devoting 110% to his every whim. So when I paid attention to Pumpkin and then viciously refused to let him play with a tiny, sharp piece of metal, I was declared a Bad Mama. And then to top off my bizarre behavior, I thanked him for using his words instead of violence to express his anger. Then he threw a toy at me (good aim-hit me in the face), luckily it was a light-weight one and then he called me “stupid”.

That was it, the last straw, his downfall. Mama is lots of things, but stupid is not one of them. I took him to his room and informed him that calling people, but most especially Mama, stupid was unacceptable and he could just stay in his room until he was able to act like a civilized human being.

Guess what? When I went back into to his room later to see if he wanted to come out, he loved me again and I wasn’t a Bad Mama anymore. Aw, and just when I was getting used to it.

Ok, I realize that I am the all-time champion Queen of the Dorks. It’s not like they had a contest, but if they had, I would’ve won it. And as their Queen I am frequently called upon to set the bar for dorky behavior. One of the ways I continue to fulfill this duty is to run things through the washing machine that have absolutely no business being washed. Like my husband’s wallet, including cash, receipts, and credit cards. Well, at least it got clean. After that I decided that just maybe it might possibly be important to check pockets before I put the pants in the wash. Good thing, too, I nearly washed his iPhone about a week later.

There is one un-washable item that I just can’t seem to catch before it goes in the washing machine-my son’s pull-on diapers. He is totally potty trained, but he’s a very deep sleeper so he wears them at night. I wash at least one load of kid-clothes every day; who knew they went through that many outfits a day! Monkey gets himself dressed for school and tends to leave the pull-ons inside his PJ pants. I don’t know is you’ve ever washed a disposable diaper, heck I don’t know if anybody else has ever done that, but I don’t recommend it. The diapers split open and deposit a gelatinous goo all over the clothes and the inside of the machine. Then I have to shake out all the clothes, clean out the tub, and re-wash all the clothes. Do I ever learn my lesson? Apparently not. Not only did I wash a diaper yesterday, I turned right around and washed another today!

Not that it’s his fault in any way, but I’ve decided that Monkey needs to transition away from the pull-ons. He’ll start flying solo tonight! Wish us luck, we’ll need it.

Tonight is my second night at night school. Doesn’t that just have the swankest shag-carpeting 70’s vibe? I’m going to night school. There are a lot of people in my class who come straight to school from work. They work all day, that’s why they go to night school. I go to night school, and take internet classes, and take Saturday classes because of my work, too. My bosses are notoriously demanding of my time and undivided attention, I am expected to drop whatever it is I am doing and rush to fulfill their slightest whims. And they’re short. And sometimes they’re smelly and messy. And sometimes they’re pouty and selfish. And sometimes they hit each other. But they sure are cute, and even though the pay sucks and the hours are lousy, the perks are pretty sweet.

This is NOT going to be a post about the indescribable euphoria of motherhood. I love Monkey and Pumpkin with a ferocity that is hard to express; it is amazing how fury and love can go hand in hand. The two of them drive me crazier than you can imagine, but I wouldn’t trade my life now for anything. But…I have worked or attended school or a combination of the two since I was 18 years old, staying home with the kids feels like playing hooky. And the housewife gig? I’m not very good at it, in fact I’m a miserable failure as a housewife. And whoever thought up that stupid term? I am not married to the house, if I were it would divorce me for sure.

There were many reasons why I decided to stay home with the kids: I never cared for daycare myself, we didn’t have family who could look after them, we aren’t wealthy enough for a nanny, and I didn’t really have a career, just a series of jobs. It is that last item on the list that has always bothered me the most. I never finished my degree and have, as a result, always felt as if some piece of me was missing, something vital I had forgotten. That is why I am going to school now. Our lack of reliable childcare is why I am going to night school, and internet school, and Saturday school. During night school and Saturday school the kids stay in the very capable care of their long-suffering Daddy. So, I’m going to take this opportunity to say “Thank you” to my very understanding Hubby, I couldn’t do it without you. And now you see what I go through everyday.