Ain't No Sunshine

Looking over this blog, it might appear these kids are all sunshine and puppy dogs. (Baseball! Zoo! Ice pops! Easy potty training! Bikes! Singing! Hugs!)

They're not.

I blog the highlights. It's the same principle as choosing to be cheerful. The stretches of days with nothing? Well, most of the time they're just too darned busy. Or filled with stuff that's really not even that interesting to me -- even Granny would yawn. And sometimes, there is just nothing worth telling. Because do you really want to know that right now, I'm trying to decide whether to go tame the eighth terrible-two-tantrum of the day or stay by the stove, listening to her scream, so that dinner doesn't burn? And how I'm wondering if someday when she herself is in front of a stove, trying to decide between comforting a raving you-know-what and saving supper,  she will look back on the abandonment and distress she's feeling and understand that these things are always more difficult than they seem fro her side right now? Nah. The details of how we got here are even less interesting than the other seven times today alone -- of her tantrums, I mean. Let's not even talk about his, which have been even more defeating, because he is, well, four, and should know better. His are, if possible, louder. And these days, often in public. Go figure.

So this is just for the record, Cody and Cordelia. I hope when you read this someday you'll have proof of how much I love you. You can print this blog out and bring it to your therapist, who, if she's a mother, will at least tell you we tried awfully hard to give you a great childhood before helping you deconstruct our many flaws and give voice to your suspicion that really, we sucked at the whole thing. You'll see all the cool stuff we do, and the everyday stuff too, and how much pleasure I take in it, and in you, even when I'm beaten down. I hope, too, that you'll be able to read between the lines and know that some days, like today, when you've left me basically catatonic, I love you so damn much that I'm still willing to shield everyone else from knowing about your "charms." And I don't take pictures of your red, puffy faces and streaming eyes and runny noses. And not because I'd be embarrassed...I'm past that, kiddos. We'll just save the sharing for a happier day.

Crap. The zucchini is scorching.