This will be quick — or at least that’s the plan as I sit here – because I am EXHAUSTED. It’s been a draining week emotionally, and on top of dealing with the anxiety and the sore tummy and the crying, the other two have had less than stellar nights. They’re happy and fine and great during the day but the nights have been rough. Graham has a head cold with a sore throat, and Emily has been having bad dreams and crawling into my bed/wedding her feet into my ribs and smacking me in the face when she rolls over. Tuesday night saw me up between the hours of 2:30 and 5:00 a.m. and then getting up at 5:45 to head to work.

Oh, and I’ve come down with a cough.

The only reason I’m making an effort to sit down and write something here is because, after a couple of days of tears (both his and mine), yesterday saw a breakthrough. School has not been happening, because it’s become this insurmountable fear, and causing the bulk of the worry. Matthew spent the day in Nathan’s classroom (working in the corner, back to the class) and Nathan had a great! day. He was engaged, and played with his friends at recess and lunch, and ended the day with a smile on his face. He complained of a sore tummy twice – when he was not in sight of his Dad – but no tears and his teacher got him back on track. The plan is for Matthew to only stay until lunch time tomorrow, and this caused NO drama tonight.

Oh, you guys, I haven’t detailed what our days have been like but this is HUGE. Time will tell if it works, but his lack of “sore tummy” last night is something we haven’t had in nearly two weeks. And while he’s had a lot of good moments, yesterday afternoon and evening he seemed like the “regular” Nathan. Laughing and goofing around and excited about show and share at school tomorrow (he’s bringing his baby photo book). He’s excited for 100′s Day on Friday as well and ate all of his supper and didn’t have any quiet and sullen moments and, oh. I feel like I can breathe a little bit.

We still have plans to talk to somebody and I’m sure we’ll still have to hand hold him for a little bit, but yesterday gave me hope. Hope. Gosh, It feels so good to say that.

This is where I would love to say that everything is fine. It’s all worked out and, oh! Maybe I built it up more than it was or maybe we turned a corner or maybe we found a solution. No, no, and no.

We did talk to a counselor (psychologist? I think?) who goes to our church. She called me back on Thursday night after the kids were in bed and gave me hope that this was normal and not insurmountable. She gave me some tips for now, and is going to try to squeeze us in this week. Matthew talked to her at church yesterday and she feels as though God is telling her that she should help us as quickly as she can. So, yay!

It’s still been hard, hope aside.

I have Fridays off, and we thought it would be fun to take the kids out of school to go skiing. Nathan, aka He Who Is The Best Skier, got worked up about going skiing. He was worried that he “might get hurt.” We told him that he did not have to ski. Dad and Mom would take turns sitting with him if he didn’t want to go. If he changed his mind, he could ski if he wanted to. We would support him either way. He had nothing to worry about.

He still worried. And cried the tortured cry and clutched his stomach.

We had this conversation multiple times on the hour-long drive up to the ski hill, and played it cool. And then he strapped on his skis.

The rest of the morning was good. SO GOOD. Back to (our) normal, even.

And then we broke for lunch.

All of a sudden the mere thought of skiing was enough to make him tear up and clutch his stomach. Again.

Matthew stayed with him while I did a run with Graham and Emily. They did some runs on the bunny hill during our absence and upon our return we decided to one run all together — just one — and go from there. That run turned into one more, and then Jr. Sporto and Sr. Sporto did yet another run together.

It’s been a non-stop ride all weekend, this anxiety train. Life is good! We’re having fun! His stomach is hurting because … something may happen in the future. His last worry at the end of the day yesterday was that his stomach might hurt. His worrying is what makes his stomach hurts, and he was worrying that his stomach might hurt. If only he understood irony.

We’re dealing, because we have to, but I won’t lie to you guys (or myself). This is really, really hard. We’re doing the best with the tools that we have, but we’re both pretty worn down. Matthew has an anxiety background, so he “gets” where Nathan is coming from, but even he is at a loss. Something snapped within Nathan, and we don’t know why, and we don’t have the right duct tape on hand.

We’ll get there, I know, but it won’t likely be any time soon.

*Jars of Clay. We saw them January 28th. Their music is woven into the tapestry of my life.

I consider myself to be an eternal optimist. I see the glass as half full, I roll with the punches, I have a stiff upper lip, insert other positive cliche HERE. I have bad days like everyone else but I know that they will pass. Usually.

Last Monday still haunts me because I have never been that dark before. It also haunts me because while I haven’t been unable to do anything whatsoever, I still feel like my feet are mired in the mud and I cannot pull myself out of the pit. Every day since then has seen one or five things fly at me, like life has decided to give me a cross-punch, a hook, an upper and a kick to the junk for good measure. And then it peed on my head and set me on fire.

So many things, so many things.

My head is spinning and my heart is aching and, oh. Optimism has taken a vacation and I have become someone who is just waiting for another shoe to fall. Probably on my head. And then it will crush my baby toe. And then I will trip over it and fall face first back into the miry mud.

So many things, so many things.

Here is but a few of them.

My sister Mel emailed the family a few weeks ago to tell us that she’d had a mole removed and biopsied. It first came back clean but it was sent to Ottawa (she’s in the Army) and it turns out that it’s malignant melanoma. There’s a chance that the biopsy got it all, but there’s a chance that Dr. Google is horribly right. She’s gone for a second biopsy, and we’re waiting to hear the results. She is the one sibling with whom I share both parents, and who has the same skin type as I do. I’ve made an appointment with my family Doctor for next week for her to take a look at me, because it would be stupid not to. We’re praying that Mel is fine because … she’s my baby sister, you know?

It’s no secret that I have been struggling with my career, and while I won’t go into the details here (I did already here), it’s just not been good. I don’t know where I fit, exactly, and the communication has been sub-par. I don’t belong there, but I don’t know where I do belong, which leaves me feeling stuck. I had a few neon arrows pointing a different direction yesterday, which gave me hope, but my Debbie Downer attitude as of late (TOTALLY JUSTIFIED) wonders if it will all work out. One neon sign, at least, is pretty concrete (Hi, Kami!), and another one would be pretty rad (Hi, Amanda and Shelley!), and the other signs would be great but maybe I’m grasping at straws. (Related: Hire me.)

I missed some important filings for the company that we use for our self-employment work and got a notice in the mail that they were going to DISSOLVE OUR COMPANY. Being the government, they made it sound like it was a done deal, and I quickly did the filings and sent this wordy cover letter and all of this documentation to back up why our company still exists (BECAUSE IT DOES). I’ve been fretting over this for a WEEK, but haven’t been home during their (short) work hours. When I called yesterday to see the status, expecting them to say TOO BAD SO SAD, the girl was all, “Oh! You filed! We’re all good.” Way to freak me out, Big Brother.

Matthew and I had it out on Monday. By “had it out”, I mean “addressed some relationship deficiencies in an open and honest two-hour discussion.” The details are not for the Internet, but our marriage wasn’t firing right. We’re back on track, and are thankful that we hashed it out, but having that in the midst of everything else was not my favorite. We’re both having a rough go of it and going it alone made it even worse. So was having to deal with restoration on top of everything else. Because REALLY?

The hardest thing this week has been Nathan. My baby boy is dealing with a lot of anxiety. He’s anxious about things that happened in the past (barfing, hockey checks) and anxious about things that could possibly happen in the future (barfing, hockey checks), but when you talk about what happened/is happening today that makes him anxious, there is nothing to report. This anxiety results in a “sore tummy” and it mostly happens at school. We’ve been talking and working with his teacher (who is AMAZING) and yesterday she emailed me at lunch to say that he was having a GREAT day. Shortly thereafter, he called me in tears (again) and I went to pick him up. While he packed his bags, she gave me the rundown of the afternoon. She was in tears, I was in tears, and he was (still) in tears. I’ve used every tool at my disposal (communication, cuddling, prayer) and nothing is working.

I feel like I’m failing as his Mom, because I don’t know how to make it better. Moms are supposed to make it better.

But how am I supposed to make it better for him when I can’t figure out how to make it better for me? I don’t even know.

*NEEDTOBREATHE. This song is on repeat. The lyrics are perfect for me and the chorus is especially hitting home right now.

Give me the answer
Give me the way out
Give me the faith to believe in these hard times

As the Christmas holidays drew to a close, a common theme in Facebook statuses were along the lines of, “I can’t wait for school to start again! My kids are DRIVING ME CRAZY.” (Some people posted a similar status the day after the holidays began.) And, hey. I get it. I remember being in the throes of babies and toddlers and preschoolers and trying to balance THE CRAZY. You take everyone out of their routines of work and school, lock them in a house together for two weeks in a season where outside play time lasts all of ten minutes, if that, and insanity is only one missed nap away.

My kids don’t nap anymore, unless we’ve been up late or somebody’s under the weather, and raging tantrums are a thing of the distant past. The only hitting that happens is if there’s a butt tap as part of a game of tag, and the only biting that occurs is in relation to food, not your brother’s arm. Diaper blowouts are mere stories that we tell in order to get the kids giggling (potty humor wins every time), and the only toys that are thrown are dice on a Monopoly board.

I like it here. It’s not that I don’t love babies — I do — but those preschool years were pretty hard, and I had textbook “easy” babies. They are pretty “easy” kids, too. Don’t get me wrong – they are not perfect. My oldest likes to be the “authority” on topics that he knows nothing about, my middle says “I don’t know” to questions ranging from “Where is your lunch kit?” to “Why does it look like a bomb went off in here?”, and my youngest is stubborn and gets frustrated easily (she comes by it honestly). Personality issues and differences aside, I do not only love them because I am their Mom.

I like them. I really, really like them.

We laugh, a lot. All three of them are quite witty and I will often find myself shaking with silent laughter at something they said or did. They are all old enough for cards games (UNO) and board games (Monopoly, Game of Life, Scrabble) and we spent many evenings sitting around the table kibitzing and smack-talking and exclaiming and smiling and having oh, so much fun together.

Going back to work and school on Tuesday was hard for me, and not just because returning to work after ten days off is always hard. We had a great five days of skiing, we celebrated Graham’s birthday with a trip to an indoor water adventure park, we laid around reading books and we played 1,895 hands of UNO and two rounds of Monopoly.We spent 24/7 together for a week and nobody went off the rails or even wished for vacation to end.

What’s getting me through this first week back to our routine after so much time off is that next week is the week we’ve booked off to spend up at the ski hill. One week up on the mountain, practicing our new skills during the day and sledding/reading/UNO-ing and movie-watching in the evenings. I am loving this stage in our lives so much and I want to take as much time as I can to soak it in. In the matter of a few years, Graham will be rolling his eyes at me (more than he already does) and Nathan will be too busy fending off the girls who will be calling and Emily will be in her room listening to sappy love songs and writing angsty poems in her journal (she comes by it honestly).

I’m so thankful that I have these three monkeys who I delight in, and who like to spend time with their Mom and Dad whether we’re cuddled on the couch watching a movie, throwing cards down on the table, or hurtling down a ski hill. I love them immensely, yes, but I also like them so much.

They make my every day.

It is no secret around these parts, or in my life offline, that I am pretty thankful for my husband and kids. I have a husband who loves me, nay, adores me. He also cooks and cleans (WAY more than I do) and is the best Dad that any kids could ever hope to have. He’s done everything from cleaning diaper blow-outs to doling out after-dinner wrestling to helping with homework. I don’t gush about him as much as I should, for fear that people would think that I’m making it up, but if you talk to anyone who knows us in real life they will confirm that he’s pretty awesome. And that his friends keep asking him to stop making them look so bad.

He and I have these three kids that we are constantly blown away by. There are moments, of course, like when our almost-nine-year-old thinks that he is the parent of his younger siblings or when our middle child WON’T EAT A VEGETABLE, ALREADY (But he’s started eating apples! YAAAAAAAYYYYYY), or when our baby girl acts, well, like a baby girl.

Normal parenting glitches aside, we have it pretty great. Not only do we love our kids, we like them. We spend a lot of time going for walks or out for ice cream or playing UNO or Monopoly and we laugh together. A LOT. My kids are more than I ever dreamed could be possible and I am so grateful that I get to be their Mom. We have a good life, the five of us. A cozy home and parents with good jobs and very minimal debt (just a teeny-tiny mortgage). We have it good – I know this – and I am thankful for it every day. I also know that so many others do not have what we have.

I have always had a soft spot for kids, long before I even had kids of my own. I have four younger siblings that I invested in when they were wee and I was a teenager (and beyond my teenage years). I spent one summer working at a daycare and have spent a lot of time volunteering at camps and at youth groups and in Sunday school classes. Having kids of my own as made that soft spot more of an open wound because there are so many kids who do not have good homes. There are kids who do not have food, who are abused, who do not have parents to call their own. We have talked about adopting, one day, or maybe being foster parents. There are are a plethora of kids who need love and we have love to give.

While we aren’t sure if we are ready to make that big step, yet, we do what we can to help others. We have a World Vision “daughter” that we’ve been communicating with for six years now (She’s growing SO FAST). We’ve also been donating in our local community. There is much poverty in other countries, yes, but there is a huge need in my home town, and probably yours. My sister-in-law works at the food bank here in Summerland and she doesn’t give me names, but she does tell me stories. There are kids who go to school on an empty stomach, and who do not have lunch and, oh. It breaks my heart. I want to show up at the school with sandwiches. SANDWICHES FOR EVERYONE!

We talked about this over dinner a few weeks ago and I asked if I could write about it and of course, she said yes. This past week has placed it even more heavily on my heart. There is an annual event (The 18th annual in Penticton, the 2nd annual in Summerland) called Toys and Toonies for Tots and Teens. The premise: Bring a toy (or five) or a Toonie ($2 coin, for the Americans)(or more) to bless needy families. You get a great breakfast as a thank you for your donation, and it was amazing, but the best part was that needy families get to eat the same breakfast and also, get new presents.

I know that budgets are tight, due to the economy, and probably more so during the Christmas season, but the thing I love about the Toys and Toonies event is that it enforces a pretty great concept: even two dollars helps. TWO DOLLARS. Something that can easily be spent on a coffee or a pop/soda or a pack of gum. That $2 can give a family some things they cannot afford. When I asked my sister-in-law what the food bank needed (besides money), she had a few ideas for me. The food bank relies on donations, but some items are too expensive to buy. A few of those items:

• Toilet paper
• Bar soap
• Peanut butter
• School snacks (granola bars, healthy cookies, etc.)
• Toothpaste
• Tooth brushes
• Canned meat and fish
• Whole wheat pasta and rice
• Canned fruit and vegetables

There are more, of course, but if you want to buy specific items, might I suggest that you call your local food bank. Communities are different, and yours may have different needs. Or, if shopping and delivering goods just won’t work for your schedule (I HEAR YOU), fire up PayPal. If you’re in BC, here’s the link. For the rest of you, Google is your enabler.

I hope I’m not coming across as preachy or demanding. It’s just something that pulls at my heart and makes me want to SAVE ALL THE KIDS. I can’t, sadly, nor can you. But if you have a dollar or more to spare, it really does make a difference. I’ve seen it in action.

I have mentioned a number of times that I have eight siblings. Yes, eight. No, not am “Octomom” eight, but eight. Same Dad, three different Moms. We’re pretty spaced apart, us three sets, but we get along pretty great regardless.

What I may not have talked about in a long time is the one sibling I spent my formative days with. Mel is my sister from the same mother and is 2 1/2 years younger then I. She is also my polar opposite. This is not a bad thing; it is just simply fascinating how two girls, from the same gene pool, can be so different from each other. Anyone who knows us both can attest to the fact that we are like black and white.

Growing up, we were not friends. Oh, my baby sister would cut anyone who hurt her big sister (she’s even feistier than I am) but the rest of the time we led different lives. Except, you know, when she was chasing me around the house with a serrated knife (!) or we were fighting about anything and everything. I will still fight for her if need be, but I wouldn’t say that we’re close. She’s my sister and I love her and that’s where we’re at.

I am no longer a child and I am married to a man (over eleven years later, this is still a revelation most days) and we have borne three children. Three children. THREE CHILDREN. Each of whom is the most amazing child that the Earth e’er did see.

(Did my Mom feel the same way about me? I’d like to hope so.)

But these kids are so awesome, so amazing, so hilarious. They crack me up all of the time and they make my heart want to burst with their words and this is a whole new world, for me.

Glimpses:

We say grace every night at dinner every night and Emily often volunteers. “Thank you so much for my family and that I love them so much and that I have the best Mom and Dad in the whole world and I love them so much.”

And I quote (myself): Graham emailed me to ask if they could stay home from school on Friday. I wrote back and asked why. Him: “Because I want to spend time with you.”

Quoting myself (again): Nathan: “Mom! Graham is bugging me while I’m trying to read.” Me: “Graham! Are you being a wenis?” Him: “Sort of.” At least he’s honest.

When it was time for the kids to go to bed last night, I made sure everyone brushed their teeth and then asked Emily what book she wanted to read. Graham asked if he could read to her. Nathan asked if he could join them. Then Graham came out a few minutes later to ask if they could read her a second book. Nathan then came out to get me to sign his homework and go to bed. Graham asked if he could cuddle with Emily to go to sleep, because she asked him to.

(I love my kids so hard.)

I went in to get him and as I tucked him in, he said that he had sung her a lullaby. (Graham DOES NOT SING.) I asked what he had sung to her and he said that he had made something up.

Emily got up to ask me for a kiss goodnight and as I tucked her in, she told me that Graham had sang to her. I asked her what he had sung to her, and she sang it for me.

Lullaby, lullaby, Emily go to sleep.

I DIE.

I had no idea that siblings could be this close. I kind of love it.

I tend to talk about how great these years are with our kids. There are no more diapers, no more bottles, no more naps to schedule our days around. Our kids get along pretty phenomenally, for real, and road trips are actually enjoyable. Enjoyable! And I’m not even lying! Also: They wipe their own bums!

The hardest part of this stage in our lives (for me) is school. Not schoolwork, or homework, or reading for book club every night. The hard part is the friends.

My kids have pretty great friends. Some are friends that they know from church, others are friends that they’ve met at preschool or school and all of the kids are good kids. By “good” kids, I mean that they are polite and respectful and play fairly. For the most part. There are times where these “good kids” give me grief. It’s when they reject my kids.

It doesn’t happen often but it happens occasionally and when it does it breaks me.

We have an after-school debrief where we talk about what they learned that day, what homework they have and what events are coming up. It also includes the question, “So who did you play with today?” I like to know which kids are investing in my kids and vice versa. I also like to know who their friends are and how the social aspect of school is going.

Yesterday, I heard that Emily didn’t play with anyone at recess or lunch. She wasn’t upset, or crying, she was just stating facts. I asked her what friend A was doing. “She was playing with friend B.” I asked her about friend C, whom she had referred to as her Best Friend last week. “She told me that I couldn’t play with her.” Well, what about friend D? “She was playing with friend C and they didn’t want me to play with them.” I then asked her what she did during recess/lunch.

I didn’t play on the playground. I just stood by a tree all by myself.

She was so matter-of-fact, and so content, that I managed to keep it together. I got her an after-school snack, sent her to play with her brothers and then snuck upstairs to cry it out a little. My baby girl had stood alone.

I had a less-than-stellar elementary/junior high experience. I was picked on for being overweight (I was on crutches in seventh grade for a knee injury and a kid (JASON XXXXXXX) passed me on the stairs and said that I needed crutches to hold me up because I was so fat.) I was also picked on for not being “cool enough.” (I had a group of the “cool girls” invite me to the schoolyard in eighth grade. They then proceeded to tell me that I was ugly and fat and that I should leave town.)

(I did leave town, which was life changing. I moved in with my Dad and Step Mom and found my faith, which led me to Matthew and these three incredible beings that have been placed in my charge.)

My own school experiences make me extra sensitive when one of my flesh and bones is made to feel less that awesome. Thankfully, I have a husband who is more even-tempered that I am. He heard me out and then we had a family meeting. We talked about Emily’s day and reiterated that family comes first. If any one of them found themselves alone, they were to look for one of the others and hang out with them. This worked well last year with the dudes. We also talked about taking care of kids they see who are alone – to reach out to them and ask them if they want to play.

These rough days really are few and far between. Our kids go to a great school, in our pretty fantastic small town, with amazing teachers, and these glitches are a part of little kids learning to operate in the world.

It’s hard, and it sucks, but my kids have a greater advantage over (me, and) many other kids. They have parents who talk to them and who listen to them and who are going to walk them through each and every step. I didn’t have that in my elementary/junior high years. As much as it kills me to hear their occasional tales of rejection, I am so glad that they have Matthew and I as parents. Two geeks/nerds/socially awkward people who get how hard school can be, and who love them so much that they tell us not just the good, but the bad, too. We work through it together.

The tears won’t kill me; they just remind me that love isn’t easy. And they make me thankful that I love enough to cry.

The Dream was work that fell on the weekends, which was neither here nor there when my kids were babies and preschoolers. As much as I have been clawing at Time to stop, I cannot control it and my kids are all in full-time school. I went back to work in an office almost two years ago (!) and while I love my coworkers — I’ve known most of them for ten years, before I ever birthed babies — I miss being the parent to greet my kids at the end of the day.

My firm was on four-day work weeks for the past three months and I had Tuesdays off. Tuesdays were my FAVORITE. Sleeping in, morning snuggles, and afternoons at the beach. This past Tuesday saw me with a day off while all three kids were at school. I sat down, uninterrupted, and got caught up on freelance work, home office work, and groceries (we like to eat). When the clock told me that the bus would be dropping the kids off in the next ten minutes, I went out front and sat on the hill with a magazine and my iPhone (of course). Before I knew it, they were scrambling up our driveway, chattering away and they even obliged their Mom with a photo.

I sent the photo out into the Interwebs with this caption: In my perfect world, I’d be here to greet them after school *every* day.

I mean it. It would be the perfect world for me. I just need to figure out how to make that happen.

(I remember being seven months pregnant with Nathan at a large wholesale chain and carrying a flailing Graham on one hip while balancing hanging flower baskets on my other hip and wondering why NOBODY HELD THE DOOR OPEN FOR ME.)(Jerks.)

While having kids in The Golden Years of childhood is great, it is not necessarily smooth sailing. There are issues that are weren’t on the radar when I first decided I was ready to throw forth babies from my loins.

Cell phones. Facebook. Twitter. Gmail.

My oldest son is in fourth grade this year (!). He had friends last year (in third grade) who had cell phones. CELL PHONES. IN THIRD GRADE. He would casually ask if he could have a cell phone too and I would reply as calmly as I could.

No. NO. NOOOOOOO.

We live in a small town and if his friends need to call him they can call our home line. If they need to talk to him during school hours they can, you know, talk to him in the school yard. I cannot think of a single reason that a child would need  cell phone in fourth (or third) grade.

As for Facebook I will continue with my eloquence and sum it up as above.

No. NO. NOOOOOOO.

I had a relative’s nine-year-old request me as a Facebook friend last year.

No. NO. NOOOOOOO.

I mean, do what you want to do, but that’s not happening in my house. My kids do not need to be on Facebook. And when the time comes that they are on the Internet, we have rules we’ve already discussed.

1. There will be no computers in their bedrooms. (Because, OF COURSE.)

2. Computers will be in a public area, be it the kitchen table or the family room. (Because, OF COURSE.)

3. When they do join FB, their Dad and I will be (unrestricted) friends. (Because, OF COURSE.)

Lest you think I am archaic and a total hosebag, Sir Graham came home from school last week with his friend’s gmail address written out on a piece of fullscap and he asked if he could have a gmail account. Matthew set it up on his laptop — with the agreement that we had to know his password at all times — and G and I started emailing.

We spent the next twenty or so minutes emailing (Knock-knock jokes, FTW!) and he thought it was pretty fun. He hasn’t asked to log in again and I’m most definitely not going to push it.

I’d love to hear your thoughts on this whole new (online) territory for kids because it’s all new to me.

*Said in the voice of Optimus Prime. Of course.

I thought you might be interested in this article from our April issue where we explore the new breed of non-breeders: Worried that kids might screw up your relationship and life? You’re not alone—a growing number of couples are choosing to live child-free…

They must read my site! All I do is write about my child-free life and how I worry that children will screw up my relationship and my life!

It just got better from there. They told me how much it cost to put kids through post-secondary education. Bright side! If my kid mastered in Male Sterilization, we could get a good return on our investment. Because NOBODY’S HAVING BABIES ANYMORE.

And then there were the stats. The stats!

(For someone with an accounting and economics educational background, I can tell you the I think statistics are a bunch of baloney. Your “representative sample” may not (and often isn’t) representative.)

1990: 65% of Adults said that children were very important for a successful marriage
2007: 41% of Adults said that children were very important for a successful marriage

Oh, how neat. Kids are screwing up your relationship and life at increasing rates. We should all stop having kids. Because kids are horrible and awful and money suckers and LIFE RUINERS. I should know this already, article aside, because I WAS A KID ONCE.

Oh, wait.

They’re right. My kids have ruined my life. How have they done so? Let me count the ways:

They are going to bleed my bank account dry. Because I have no idea how to use coupons or shop sales and thrift stores and stretch my dollars. Because the meat my husband harvests from hunting and the fruits and vegetables we harvest from our garden are so horribly expensive. Because I won’t ever make them get a job and teach them how to save for the future and for their education. Because I’d much rather have them leech off of me and live here until they are forty. Because I am an idiot/sucker.

My money is not my own! I can’t do whatever I want with it! I get to spend it on my mortgage and my work clothing and my groceries and my car insurance like I did before kids and, well. You can see how my world has changed.

All of the potty talk at the table. Someone rips a fart and/or uses a cucumber to make a phallic joke. Just a sec. That’s all led by my husband. Never mind.

My relationship has suffered. The many date nights where we go out and dream big dreams for each other and dream big dreams for our kids is a sure sign that we are ruined. RUINED. All of the flirting and innuendos and butt-cheek smacking and nightly locked bedroom door shows that we’ve totally lost the love.

I don’t have any free time. If you talk to any of my childless friends, they will tell you that…they have no free time. Huh. Turns out that you fill your free time with things and people that you love whether you are childless or not, working or not, in a relationship or not. But let’s just blame this one on the kids.

All of the quirky things they say! Because we are Serious Grown Ups, we have no time for that kind of nonsense. Laughing is for pansies.

They want to sit on my lap and smother me with hugs and kisses all of the time. We all know that is just part of their grand master plan to infect us with germs and to achieve world domination.

So, as you can see, my kids have totally ruined my life.

It’s really, truly awful. Hugs welcome. (Just wash your hands first.)