The stage of parenthood clearly involves less tantrum control and more jedi-mind tricks.

After nine years, my children gave me the gift of simultaneously looking at the camera for a photo.  Priceless.


Those first few years of motherhood, it seemed like life was a never-ending string of eating, and vomiting, and cleaning vomit, and changing diapers, and Baby Einstein and trying to calm the irrational mood swings of children who so desperately wanted to lick electrical outlets.  I survived that chaos with the promise of big, uninhibited smiles and sleep schedules and monogrammed onesies.  I watched other children, older children, who ate chicken without SCREAMING, and I thought that there was hope for a life that was more...civilized.  


And then one day, I asked told my kids to line up and SMILE.  And I got this.


Four happy kids, despite all those years that I ruined their lives by not allowing them to play in the toilet.  They dress themselves, they (mostly) wipe themselves, they brush their teeth and get themselves ready for school, and clean their rooms (when threatened with a Wii-ban).  They eat chicken.  Somehow it got to be SO easy, and yet, 642 times more complicated.


Oh, they are the best gift that was ever surgically removed from my uterus.  


Happy Mother's Day, to all of you who have ever had to scrub permanent marker off of a toddler's eyelids.  And to those of us who are past that stage, and understand that LACK of evidence and obvious mischeivery means our children are clearly playing with firecrackers on a pile of bedding in their closet.