Daughter of Mine..

I thought having a daughter would just be the 'be all, end all'. I love girls. I love being a girl and a woman. There is nothing better to me than great hair, new lipstick, a pretty dress or perfume. I love the clothes, the jewelry, the bags, the SHOES.

I had sons. I love my sons. I admit, I was worried and probably hostile when I found out that my husband had impregnated me with the male species. I coveted my nieces, I loved having them over and dressing them up, painting their nails, fussing over them. All three of my sweet nieces are 'girly girls', especially the last one who is the tiniest, most petite, little thing. She is three years older than my daughter.

Who is now bigger than her.



I found out around 20 weeks that I was expecting a daughter. I was beyond elated, I was over the moon! OH JOY! I went on to have a non-complicated pregnancy and the easiest delivery yet.

She was the most beautiful newborn, all her tiny features perfect. She resembled my 6 yr old son, who looks the most like me so obviously her father was incredibly taken with her. She was a delightful infant, we were insanely in love with this little angel.

She was happy, she was surrounded by so much love with us and her big brothers. All of her aunts and uncles and cousins adored her because of my longing for a daughter and because of her beautiful disposition.



My daughter is now three years old. I entered into this year with a fair amount of trepidation, due to all of my previous children turning into monsters at this age. "Terrible Two" has nothing on age 3. It is the hands down WORST year of a child's life (or maybe better put, a parent's).

This child is insane.

OK. Maybe not technically, physically 'insane', but I swear she is.

This little girl, who is a giant in height (thank you daddy), is a bundle of energy. Not in as much as she is energetic, but she is energetic all day, every day. She is talkative, she talks nonstop. She is messy, she is rough, she is loud, she is bossy.

I am tired.

I am more exhausted mothering this little mini-me than I ever was mothering TWIN BOYS. She has me going from sun up to sun down.

She loves the outdoors. She loves worms. She eats dirt.

I know nothing of tomboys, at all. I was the prissiest, most articulate little diva ever. I understand books, literature, music. I know nothing of fishing poles, crayfish. Nor do I want to!



I have become the consummate 'football mom' if you will. My twin sons are not overly athletic, but they had a good season playing for the first time. Of course, 6 yr old excels at sports. (never mind that the child cannot READ yet! ugh). Point being, I learned to understand the sport, the boy, the son. I learned what is expected of me when it comes to being a mother of boys. I get it.



My daughter has totally confounded me! I don't know how to mother this dirty little piglet..she is a walking contradiction. At first sight, one would naturally think 'what a darling (however large) child!' because I dress her according to society's standards. Then she will either tackle a nearby brother or sit in the dirt to expose her underpants.

My husband is thrilled that our daughter is a boy.



I am hoping she will eventually turn into a girl.

I had a friend at one point in life that was a naturally gifted athlete. She was an amazing basketball player, she played volleyball and softball and was exceedingly good at all things sports related. She was at the same time very feminine. She loved clothes and jewelry and boys. She has since married and had a beautiful daughter of her own.

I am hopeful!

A Day in My Life

I often make reference to my "crazy mother who lives with us". This post is going to be a detailed description of why I call her that.


I love my mother. She shielded me throughout most of my young life from the ill fortune of her life. When I was a late teen and found out that for most of her married life she had been verbally and physically abused by my father, I felt sorry for her. I have since grown up. While in many ways I still feel sorrow for her in her situation, I also understand my father better. Crazy, right? How can one justify the abuser?


Don't judge me. My reasons are my own and yes, I do justify it. To a point. Of course, no one should be abused, ever. But in an imperfect world, in which we live, there is abuse. It's a cycle. My father was an abuser, my mother the abused. In the same sentence, I can say my mother was an abuser and my father the abused. It's a hard thing to explain unless actually experienced.


This is why an insight to my daily life while living with my mother would explain some of my justification.





My day starts early, of course, I have four children. Husband's alarm clock goes off around 5:00am. I usually sleep through this, unless he is in one of those moods where he keeps hitting snooze.


Anyway, my day begins with the usual chaos any mother of multiple children goes through to get everyone dressed, fed, clean, clothed and out the door in one piece to make it to the bus.


First of all, no one wants to get up. My kids even go to bed before 9:00pm. So, after initial argument and finally getting up and dressed, breakfast is served and teeth are brushed. About this time, toddler awakens and has IMMEDIATE NEEDS as all toddlers do. "drink!" "cuddle!" "baby doll!"


During this, I'm usually barking orders to older kids to get backpacks, get shoes. I hear a door squeak open. Here it comes. My mother.


"shhshshhh....shhshhhhshhh....shhshhshshh"..her wheezing and breathing precedes her arrival. She has COPD. She smoked for 40 years, including the time she was pregnant with me.


"Noelle, can you come over?"


My mother wants me to come over and SIT on her couch and visit. I do not have time to do this. It's 7:30am and I am trying to get people out the door. I tell her that I'll be over in a little while.

She is angry. She wants me to come over.Now. She storms home and slams door.
Kids are gone, out the door to school.

8:30am. Door squeaks open.

"Noelle, can you come over and look at my pills?"

Her pills are fine. She wants attention.

I check her pills. The pills are fine.

"Noelle, can you look at this one spot on my back?"

"Noelle, can you go downtown and get me some milk?"
She can drive. She can go downtown. She fought us to get her driver's license back, after her two year chemo.

"Noelle, can you put three yr old upstairs and come over?" She wants me all to herself.

No. I cannot PUT my daughter upstairs. She yells, she slams the door.

I go upstairs to fold laundry with toddler. Door squeaks.

"Noelle, can you come over?"

No, I'm upstairs. I am making the beds, taking care of clothes, possibly exercising or getting a shower. I am emptying dishwasher, cooking, baking, going to the school. I have doctors appts, dental appts. I have to mop the floor, clean the bathrooms. I am taking the car to be serviced, I am taking care of a sick child. The list never ends, there is always something to do in the house.

Door slams.

Noon. Lunch time for toddler and myself. Door squeaks.

"Noelle, can you call my doctor and ask for more pills?" or "Noelle, can you please call the pharmacy and ask them about the xanax?" or "Noelle, can you call the dentist because my tooth hurts." or "Noelle, I need you to call the ear doctor because my hearing aides don't work." These are all things she can do herself, but only does if she chooses, because she would prefer me to do them for her.

This is all so she gets attention.

After lunch, if she has actually taken all her meds, she usually passes out thankfully for the rest of the day. This is when I am able to move freely about my own home without fear of disturbing her or getting her mad at me.

Sometimes she doesn't get her meds in her and she will manage to open her door separating our homes 6-7 times during the afternoon. She will yell into my home "Noelle, where are you?"

The fun really starts when the boys burst home from school at around 3:45pm. The rush of them coming through the back door, yelling from school, needing food and help with homework coincides with my mother squeaking open the door, just having woke up from her 4hour nap. She is not only confused about where she is, she is upset that the kids are not quiet. "What time is it?" or "where is your father?" (dead, mom, dead) or "why must you boys be so loud?" or my favorite "can you come over?".

Usually my husband gets home around 5:00 pm and is expecting dinner. She usually arrives about 5:30 wanting me to come over. I try to have enough dinner left over so I can send her home with some dinner, because she will not cook for herself. She will eat toast and coffee.

After dinner, during our family time, my mother will come over and ask my husband numerous questions. Questions that have all been asked before. Many, many times before. She needles him. She badgers him.

Almost every single night, approximately 20 minutes before we put our kids to bed, she will come over and bring a handful of candy she wishes to distribute to them. Obviously, we do not allow the children to have candy right before bed since they have all showered and brushed their teeth.

She is mad. She leaves and slams her door.

My husband and I are exhausted, both laying on either ends of our sectional.

Door squeaks open. "shhshhsh.....shhshhshhshh....shhshshhh" she is wheezing and she comes over. "Can one of you come over?" or "Noelle, can you come over and talk to me?" or "can one of you check my pills?".

Once and a great while, we try to have a spontaneous moment of intimacy downstairs. Not possible. She has snuck over and caught us too many times.

My mother calls me during the night. "Noelle, can you come over?"

It may be 2:00am in the morning.

My mother has suffered through cancer. It was awful and horrible.

She lived. It is awful and horrible. One has no idea how much it pains me to write that. I love her. Do I wish she had died? Of course not, no, never. Do I wish she was her 'old self'? Yes. I miss my mother.

My husband and I have no privacy. We have no sense of privacy, as she doesn't respect our home as our own.

I have friends that would like to visit my home. For coffee, for playdates, for visits. As soon as anyone appears in my home, she immediately opens her door and comes over. She cannot understand our conversations. She is easily confused and angered. My friends don't come around as much. I understand.

My mother interrupts my phone conversations. I could be on the phone with the school teacher or principal, a doctor, she doesn't care. "NOELLE!!! I NEED YOU!" or "where are you???". Every day. All day.

Mom has a problem with the children. She feels they are too loud (they are, I actually agree on this one), they are wild, they talk too much. She doesn't understand that there are actually 4 of them, alive and kickin', here in this house.

This has been for over three years.

My mother recently misplaced a huge amount of money my father left to her. When I say misplaced, I mean, it's gone. We cannot find it and she has no idea where it has been moved to.

My mother walks in on my showers. She takes things from our fridge and pantry. My mother bothers our babysitters, she won't leave them alone. It is hard to find a sitter for four kids in the first place, try finding one to deal with a demented grandmother as well.

If I leave town to shop, I cannot tell her because she will have an episode before hand to ensure I do not leave the house. If I do leave for an afternoon or we take off on the weekend, we come home to our house totally and completely LOCKED and she has all the keys.

If there is a Christmas dinner planned at my in laws, she will have some kind of medical or emotional crisis so I have to be with her and not my husband and kids.

My mother will ask me to put my children upstairs so I can talk to her.

My mother is jealous of my children.

My mother is jealous of me, she was jealous of my father's attention to me.

My father got to the point of abuse. He would actually hit her in order to make her stop talking or needling him. I used to think that it was so awful. I wondered why he never, ever hit me. I was easily as annoying as a child I'm sure.

She drove him to it. I know this because I feel this overwhelming, suffocating feeling at times. I just want her to stop. Just stop. Just please please stop.

Just leave me be.

Leave my children be.

That feeling is hard to admit. I love my mother. But the woman who lives in my house is not my mother. My mother is gone. She died with cancer 5 years ago. The person who inhabits my mother's body is a stranger. She is scared of everything, she is scared of her pills, of my dog, of the neighbor kid.She is terrified of being alone, she is sure there are men in the woods who are going to break in our home and kill us. She is afraid of turning off her tv at night. Her lights.
Gone is the woman who danced in the living room to the BeeGees. Gone is the artist who drew with charcoal. Her love of decorating and her colors, gone. The woman who could dazzle with the bluest of eyes, who loved and was loved.
We cannot go on vacation without having someone to stay with her, and still my cell phone rings hundreds of times while we are gone. I worry terribly when we are gone, thinking she will get so confused that she'll take off in her vehicle or have an accident.

My mother is gone. She is lost and I am here to care for this woman who resembles her.

What I have written today is merely a half of what my day entails with her. I am literally so exhausted by reading it myself that I don't know how to continue.
We cannot go to a football game. A wrestling match. A little league game. We have to sneak in and out of our home. If we try to leave, she cannot bear it.

I have a lot of humor. I have to in order to survive.
I have a lot of grief, too. No one wants to admit the person they loved their whole life, who was an amazing mother, is gone.
Mine is gone.

The sound of silence.



Today is one of those days that every single noise in my house is driving me NUTS.

Three year old daughter has officially given up her nap. Not good. The two hour break I had in the middle of the day, for coffee or exercise or nothing, is gone forever. She currently sits next to me blowing on a school issued recorder, every note pierces through my tymphanic membrane through my head and makes me recoil. The ten year old twins have done nothing but irritate the six year old brother today. And by 'irritate', I mean poke, trip, steal his sandwich, hide his Nintendo DS, and tie his shoelaces together. The six year old finally resorts to fits of extreme violence toward them and being the incredible mother I am, I let him, because they simply have it coming to them.

I just want peace and quiet.

Namely quiet.



I could even tolerate a movie playing, a child's movie, even...if they would be quiet and SHUT IT for a short time.



Saturdays often present the problem of my husband being home and wanting to GO GO GO and WORK WORK WORK. See, mommys and kids do not want to move quick on weekends. At least in our family, we want to be in pj's and read the paper or book or whatever. Not my husband. The only time he sits down is after dinner to digest and then he's off again on another project. So, weekends are not usually great for us. This relates to my need for quiet in the sense that he is not physically present in our home right now to remove the sources of noise (children).



I have decided that if I die and go to hell (which is a very real possibility), I will be stuck in a car with multiple children all talking at the same time. My children all have a tendency to interrupt one another, which in turn prompts the first kid to speak louder, which in turn pushes the next child to practically yell in order to interrupt the previous child and so on and so forth. Our school is approx 1.7 miles from our home and usually by the time we get there, I am in a state of panic from the sheer noise. I'm trapped in it. A vortex or swirling sentences and nonsense comments and stories and songs and alphabets and 'who said whats'....it's like a black hole of noise.

No escape!



My poor husband will often sit down on the sofa at night, try to initiate a conversation and I can level him with one sideways look, over my stupid horn rim glasses. I have an occasional eye twitch in my left eye, which either signifies my nerves on the brink or maybe a stroke in the making.

I have mentioned before that I like words, reading them or writing them. I am, in fact, a very good public speaker. I am, however, so over sensitized by my children's constant noise that even holding a coherent phone conversation is sometimes impossible.



After having twins, I learned that the later a child talks, the better. I can remember clearly shocking my cousin one day when she asked why I didn't encourage my third child to 'use his words'...when I replied "I don't encourage my children to talk. Ever.".

Once they start, they never stop.



So, we attend functions, be it church or school sporting events or whatever. Adults ask my children questions, generic questions ALL adults ask ALL kids, usually getting a blank stare or a one word answer from a sullen or shy ten year old who doesn't make eye contact. Not my sons! My sons will launch into a dissertation or the days' events or give a detailed account of an experience that would relate to the question. I cannot tell you how many people have complimented me on my kids, especially the twins, ability to sit and visit and look everyone is the eye. My twin sons have a handshake to rival my own. I guess it is confidence, I would like to think they are confident.

So, in all my complaining of the noise and constant talking and communication that goes on 18 hours a day in my house, I should not really be telling them to be quiet. I try to stimulate the conversation by asking them to find a point of their story, make it, and move on.



Sudden, blissful silence has filled my house as I've sat here and typed. Three year old has invested herself into a movie, thankfully a Pixar film that I can stomach. The boys have stopped fighting and one is reading, two are gaming.

Joy to the world!



Now, the next obstacle will be for me to find 30 minutes to exercise and shower. Alone. As we have church tonight which will be yet another challenge in my quest for quiet.

Taking four kids to a Catholic Mass in very entertaining. For the other parishioners. They all smile and look adoringly at the three year old, who is sometimes holding up her dress to show some random person that Snow White is on her big girl pants. These people all do this funny, 'oh she is so cute' face and I know why.
Because they are thankful this kid isn't theirs!
We were much more diligent churchgoers with our twins in tow. We took them regularly and they fell into a rhythm of mass, understanding the nuances of a mass and how it works. They knew the Our Father by age 4 and flow through mass easily. After adding the third and fourth installment of our family, we tend to have a 50% record for mass. If we were more motivated and willing to undergo the trauma of hauling all four kids out every Sunday morning into a public domain where CERTAIN humiliation will occur, our younger kids would be better.
The six year old asks, on average, 30 times during the hour long mass, when it will be over. The highlight for him is the 'passing of peace', where he can get up and shake his grandfather's hand. Our daughter, all three years of her, asks several questions to the actual priest while he is speaking. The reverence of prayer holds no meaning for her. In her mind, it's suddenly quiet in the church...well, of course that silence needs to be filled with her voice either singing Old McDonald or announcing she must poop immediately. All the while, the other members of the congregation cover their smiles and duck their heads (don't encourage the crazy toddler!). I am hoping that they find in their memories that possibly their own children acted as such at one time in history. In all probability, I'm sure they are all thinking "if that child were mine, she would get a spanking". Well, she does! We just pick our battles.

So, in my heart of hearts, I know my children are not YAPPING and TALKING and YELLING just to single me out and drive ME to the brink of insanity. It's not personal.

They are trying to drive the whole world nuts. One house and church at a time.

Blog, blog, blog.

I took a huge leap of faith and posted this link to my Facebook profile. The support has been amazing and almost unsettling...I feel as though I need to step up my game.

It's personal, this writing stuff. Some of the material is probably intimate enough for a therapist to dissect.

I have some life experiences to draw from. I have the most experience with motherhood, obviously, since my husband and I have decided to repopulate our small town. I have some experience with love. I have a lot of experience in laughter, and friendship. If you are a friend of mine, you are loved loved loved. In not having siblings, I developed strong ties to my friends and they are incredibly important to me. I love music. I love wine. I love my hair.

Let's explore a vein of friendship.

My children have friends. They are adorable. The twins friends roll through the back door, idle around the kitchen until the refrigerator door opens, rape and pillage the inhabitants of the fridge and pantry. My six year old has friends who still like to sit on my lap and ask if I'm their aunt. Our three year old daughter has no friends because she is really, really bossy and doesn't share well with others, which she comes by naturally (from my MIL..WHOOPS! haha) from me. Kidding.

At any rate. I have these people in my life that I consider friends. Some have changed and rolled with the tides of time, the different directions life take us. Some have stayed the same, while some are new and exhilarating.

My very first friend I met in dance class at age 5. I remember my distinct impression being that she did not look like me. It's funny that a child may make that distinction, or use that as a reason to stare at someone until they wave or smile at you. Instant friends! She was taller than me, slimmer, willowy almost and had black hair. We were very close friends for many, many years. We spent many nights at each other's homes and had many creative outlets that we shared, such as dance, piano, music and literature. We are still friends. After a separation of college and life, we came back together later in life to share many laughs and some intense tears. This friend is a good friend. She is educated, astute. She is real and cultured and interesting. I do not know what I bring to her life except a love that I have had for her for years. It was fun being her friend.

I have a friend that I met midway through my teenage years. Maybe thirteen. She was always in my grade, but we ran in different social circles. She was very quiet, extremely intelligent. She lived on a farm, outside of town, so she rode a bus and I was a walker. After we met, she became a walker too, since she practically moved into my home with my parents and I. This person became the better half of me. She is my alter-ego, my nicer part. My tendency to lean to the darker side of humanity is supremely challenged by her. She made my life BETTER. She brought more laughter to my life than anyone. We simply just get one another and there is no pressure either way. We understand our children, our husbands. We know that sometimes marriage is not what we planned or anticipated, but a conscience decision to make it work instead of an unconscious one to NOT. This person went on vacations with us, she was an integral part of my family. She watched my father die slowly with me. She stood with me on my wedding day as I stood with her on the evening she was married. Our children share the same school, the same sports and even the same bus. Our children are not close friends, but it's fine with us, because truly we don't expect anyone to have a friendship like ours, it's so in sync and whole and healthy. We laugh everyday. Along with her was our third partner in crime, who was undoubtedly the most popular girl in our school. This girl had a heart of gold and smile to launch ships. She was kind to a fault, never wanted to disappoint. She would tell anyone what they wanted to hear, because she just naturally liked people. She was fun, everywhere she went, people followed. The three of us shared many, many years of laughter, tears. We did all the stereotypical teenage stuff, the trivial and minute details that make being a teen an actual category. I have scrapbooks of memories. We had our disagreements, sometimes big, usually small. Both these girls married their high school sweethearts and live in our small town. As mentioned, the weddings we shared were events. Our pregnancies were shared. Our visits in the hospital, holding the new babies. Our trials and tribulations. All shared.

On the morning my father died, these two women came from their jobs, walked up the stairs to my bedroom and crawled in bed with me. We cried. They diligently sat through two viewings and one funeral. We laughed.

3/3=1. We will always have that. I can call either one of them at any time, day or night and any problem can be solved with them.

These women are my history, they know my insecurities and my strengths. They don't expect me to be more than what I can be. They love me for it.

I love them back.

As I previously wrote about, when a person has multiple kids, by association that person makes nice with other kids' parents.

This happened to be a windfall for me, for I met the fourth person that helps to define me. As chance has it, we even shared a boyfriend in college...not at the same time of course, but as the guy liked blondes....we fell into the category of 'old vs. new' girlfriend.

This particular woman married another young man from my town, and she proceeded to have five children with him. All of these children shared a nursery school with my own children. After several tense run-in's at the nursery school (because in the world of 'old vs. new' girlfriend, there is always a villain), we sat down over coffee and laughed our hearts out. She has become one of the best sources of comfort to me in the past few years. The obstacles she faces daily as a mother of five (as in FIVE ACTUAL OFFSPRING), all while maintaining her humor and sarcasm.

During the years of high school and college, I made many acquaintances, I shared many laughs and fun times with many different people. There are a few particular people that left imprints on my life, people who left a mark or maybe even a scar, that are not in my life anymore. Their impact was not less than those I have mentioned, just geographically challenged.

See, there are friends who bring the happy. Friends who bring the laughter. Friends who like to drink too much. Friends who bring the stress and sadness. Friends who have nervous breakdowns. Friends who inspire, who infuriate. Friends who need and are needed. They all intermingle and interchange with one another. It's our duty as friends to one another to move with the intensity of the changes of our lives. Holy God and crap: I cannot be happy every single day. There are days when I am dark and twisty and moody, days I feel like floating on air.

I'm not crazy. I'm just 35 and stuck in the middle of my life with four kids wondering where the hell the last 15 years went.

My friends know who they are. I do not have gray areas. I love when I love and while I may not always agree, they know where I stand. One night while sitting at our kitchen table, enjoying his whiskey and water...my father bestowed to me one of a million diamonds. He said, "If you grow up and really, actually become a grown up, adult human being and still have two friends to count on, you are lucky. If those two people have you as their friend, they are even luckier."

Indeed.

The holidays are over.
The tree is still up.

Does depression mean one is depressed? Does society understand how, just exactly, depressing being a mother can be at times? I think not.
Motherhood is this fairytale that is shown on TV as pushing a pink pram, or baby jogger..while staying trim, neatly pressed, fashionable in a 'Vera Bradley' matching diaper bag kind of way.
It's an illusion.
Anything that starts off with as much pain as childbirth should immediately send off warning signals.
"I'm dying!!!!"...oh quick, let's get a fun picture and "smile!" and "push" and "OMG I AM DYING"...not good.

I dreamed the dream! I did. I thought having a child would 'complete me' (gag) and make me 'whole' (double gag). Motherhood is an illusion that we as young mother's created, conveniently forgetting the fact that most of our mothers drank bloody mary's for breakfast and gin and tonic's for lunch.
I have the fortune of not working. Loosely defined as 'not working out of the home'..because you can bet your bottom dollar that if I had to herd my peeps out the door every day by 7 am, no one would be alive in this house.
I married a man who was raised with a mother at home, as mine was. This is kind of what he expected of me, which is just dandy with me because as mentioned five seconds ago, mass genocide is really not a good option.
Mothers who 'work outside the home' (I'm starting to find this funny) have it so incredibly hard that I cannot believe there are not more suicides.
The reality of motherhood is that is it supermegaultraomgcanihavecoffeefromanivdrip hard.
First an foremost, getting the child here in one piece is beyond hedonistic. From first pee on the stick, you are a vessel of life. A vessel. Nothing more, trust me. Do not drink. Do not take medication. Do not exercise. Do not have sex. Already, I'm sensing this person (or in my case, people) is more important than me. Now, for those of you who do not know me, no one is more important than ME. Many of my friends really love this about me. I do not pretend to be this earth mother/self sacrificing friend/wife/lover. I am selfish about me. I love my time. It's mine. I do not share well with others.
Enter fetus. After giving birth in front of every medical resident in the hospital (11 sets of eyes total on my cervix), I bring these people home and proceed to lose my mind. Hey guess what? Babies do not sleep, EVER. And I had two of them. The only human sleeping in my house was my husband. No sleep, again, it's all about me, means I cannot function in a way that society deems fit. Now, of course, in hindsight, I had postpartum depression, obviously. But 11 years ago, that was a new term and no one was really used to it. So, a young mother at that time struggled usually alone. Another part of motherhood that is neglected is the presence of the black death bellybutton. What is THAT? It's like some awful reminder that the baby was attached to you WITH said disgusting growth. It's a real bright spot in a mother's life when, after two weeks of wrestling with the lifeless stump, it finally falls off. Congratulations, baby, you are on your own now.
So, there is little to no sleeping. Hair is falling out. Boobs are foreign objects. Husband is a FOREIGN OBJECT.
These little beings begin to grow. And they grow and grow and grow and grow.
Beings are now walking. Goodbye privacy! I have not had a BM alone in 10 years. I have taken maybe 2 showers alone. They are everywhere all at once. Oh hey and guess what? They still don't sleep that much. Know what else? They get sick. A lot. This means coughing. This means vaporizers and cleaning vomit at 1 am. Right about this time is when mother's attempt to potty train said beings. Well, now that's just another domain of hell. So, along with the coughing, cleaning the vomit, now there are bed filled with urine to contend with.
I am not kidding.
There are battles. Time outs. There are reasons for things that need explaining. Because now, along with walking and shitting their pants, they talk. The questions! "Why" "why" "why"????
BECAUSE I SAID SO.
I learned as I got older and my kids got older to answer their incessant questions with a question or two of my own. "Is this seriously a question, child?" "Do you ask questions just to hear your own voice?" and my personal favorite "Do you want to live to see tomorrow?"...
Now that they are older there is much more food involved, as in I should buy stock in Wegman's groceries. The sheer food intake of a young boy is comparable to how much sleep a mother loses. Inconceivable.
By now, must of us have had more than one, or in my case, two kids. In my insanity, I added two more children to the already present twins.
Children, children everywhere!!! And if they are not actually physically present in a room, I can guarantee you that something of theirs IS. Shoes, backpacks, laundry, homework, football gear, toys, toys toystoystoys!!!
At this time, mother herself has little to no identity AT ALL, aside from sous chef and chauffeur.
All this time, there is still little sleep available. A mother has to be, at all times, alert to coughs, kids falling out of bed, pee incidents, etc. Along with this, a wife must be, at all times, ready to drop on the bed and have sex with husband. hahahaha....yeah.
There are friends. Even better, friends parents. You muddle hopelessly trying to find someone who can relate to the situation. There are some! Oh yeah.
The laundry is like something from a novel, in terms of one doesn't think it's real until it's actually walking itself out of the laundry room.
There are boo-boos. Broken bones. Hurt feelings. Slammed doors. Fighting siblings. Teeth knocked out.
There are complications, there are doctors, dentists, speech therapists.
There are teachers, there are coaches.

However. That all being said, these are only the parts that no one warns about.
The parts that people talk about are the good things.

The relief of carrying twins to a due date. The first cry. The smell and feel of their skin.
The first smile, the first tooth.
"Mama".
"Dada".
The feeling that you get when they are finally asleep and you collapse on the couch.
The feeling you get when two little feet, encased in fleece pjs, pad into your room, way to early to get up, and ask to sleep with you.
Pink cheeks. Messy hair. Fingerpaints.
"I poopy on the potttyyyyy!!!"
Reading stories. Watching Dumbo 62,000 times.
Trick or treating and Christmas morning. Riding a bike with no training wheels. Becoming a big brother.
Riding the school bus to school, only to find out that mom is not there.

There are the unmistakable signs of a mother. She is usually surrounded by a gaggle of children. Her purse is large enough to carry a change of clothes for a toddler, a sippy cup, a snack, wipes, and a wallet, perhaps a toy or two. Hair almost always in a ponytail. She has on little or no makeup. Hopefully, she is laughing.

It took me months to fall in love with my husband. Little bits at a time. It took about 2 seconds to fall in love with my children with all the emotion that one body can physically handle without exploding.
It's intoxicating, it's awful. It's tiresome, it's thrilling.
Your pride and prejudice will come out with a tiger growl. And no one will ever hurt my child as long as I'm around to protect him or her.

Welcome to motherhood.
Sleep is for wimps.