A Conversation With Myself

Self, we've got some things that we need to go ahead and get out into the open. Some cluster thoughts, some everyday fears, some round about all purpose emotional fires that we're constantly dissolving with buckets and buckets of I-don't-have-time-for-this water, before they've even had a chance to smoke.

Where do we even start?

As a mother, we want to raise our children to the best of our ability. We want to raise them beyond that, even. We want to push the limits of what a good mother should be, and be a hundred million trillion inifintyillion times better than that.

We had no idea, when signing up for this gig, how unimaginably hard it would be, to- for the very first time in our lives, to have to be the one to make the rules. It was fun at first- we watch these cartoons not those ones, bedtime is at this time every night so that we can get up at that time every morning, and, chew with your mouth closed when you're eating, because the obnoxious noises make Mommy crazy, and now that shes the boss, she can actually make that ridiculous request a rule.

But we just didn't know, did we? That things would go from that, to this. From worrying about whether or not to give Dora and her annoying talking backpack the ax, to- do we ban sugar, in the house? What about cooked food altogether?



We can't avoid this, anymore, self. We have to figure all this crap out, and we need to do it now. We want the babies to be as healthy as they can possibly be, we say. We want them to grow up active, full of energy, with not a single thing holding them back. We want them to be socially accepted, and academically outrageous in the best way possible. We want the world for them.

So how do we give them that? First of all, we have to let them be who they are. We spend so much time correcting the meaningless little things that we find annoying, just because we've been in the same room together for too long, rather than just focusing on the things that are actually important. The test, to figure out the difference? Would it matter, if they weren't still here? A horrible horrible way to put it, we know, but- the way that Charlie eats bananas, which is his only downfall might we add, wouldn't matter to us if we didn't have him here to bother us with it. I don't think we'd ever look back and say "well at least he knew how to eat a banana the right way".



Ok really, self. Lets contain the conversation. Lets not let our tired we-spent-half-the-day-at-the-hospital-having-tests-done-again attitude let this take a turn for the depressing.

Whats really on our mind, is- are we messing up our kids?

Experimental diets, broken traditions, promises of pink hair before the first day of kindergarten... are we setting ourselves up for disaster?

Do we stick to what we know, or do we stick to what we want to know? Will our drastic decisions steer us in the direction that we're hoping to go, or will they drive us completely off course, causing us to crash and maybe never recover?

We don't care what other parents think of us. We don't really care what anyone else thinks of us, we don't have the time for that, but- how will our kids feel when other kids, and maybe their parents, the ones that we don't give a crap about, start talking. How will our kids answer to them? Will they stand up for themselves? Will our beliefs be their beliefs? Or will they hate the choices we've made, and in turn, hate us?



All of the babies are asleep right now. Ya Ya Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants is playing in the background, to give us a little noise and keep us company. Theres a bowl of cold raw sweet potato carrot soup on the couch to the left of us, and a sleeping fat cat to the right. We've had to get up at least 6 times since sitting down to talk, to tend to night terrors and fevers, feedings and phone calls. So even though the point of this conversation was to clear our mind and sort through our concerns, we're still standing in our short shorts under a rain cloud that seems to be floating only above our head, at the start of an endless race, with low batteries plugged into an ipod with excellent music.

Good thing Christopher is running next to us holding an umbrella above our head. And he brought his ipod, which although it contains a little too much rap for our liking, and doesn't hold as many songs, it gives us a steady upbeat to run to.