Two Girls in a Tub

It's been one of those evenings. The kind the children scarcely survived. Not because of impending natural disaster or accident (you know most of those happen at home). The children scarcely survived because they were horrible monsters and I wanted to kill them. Didn't want to leave daycare, didn't want to get out of the car once home, talked back to mommy repeatedly, insisted on dinner on the front porch, refused to eat dinner, complained of being hungry, cried because there would be no treats, begged for "sleepy time tea", refused to drink sleepy time tea, complained of being hungry, cried that mommy was starving them, refused to go upstairs, refused to remove shoes, hit each other, refused to give mommy a hug goodnight, cried because mommy left the room without giving them a hug goodnight. These are my progeny, my gift to the world. World, please come get your @#$%ing gift.

I met a woman at the opening ceremony of the Avon 2-Day Walk for Breast Cancer when Kate was just 15 months old and Sarah was but a twinkle in her daddy's eye. This woman had 3 girls who were all teen-agers. She said something to me that I think about almost daily on the topic of rearing children. It was not "watch where you step", although that would also be good advice and I am making a mental note to myself as I write this to impart it to some unsuspecting new mother at some point. She said "the hard stuff gets easier and the easy stuff gets harder."

Evenings like these leave me completely exhausted and wishing we'd just gone ahead and gotten another dog instead of reproducing, but upon reflection I am forced to admit that most of this is what that woman probably thought of as the "easy stuff". So terrifying is this thought, that despite my sheer, all-over, deep-muscle tired, I can't really sleep. In an effort to cheer myself up as I close my eyes and envision teen-age Kate and Sarah (help!) I'm instead thinking of how adorable they were last night, when they were taking a bath together and giggling in the tub. See?