Life 3.9

I think about a lot of stuff all day. Important stuff like: why am I eating another cookie if I'm not even hungry? Who's the idiot that thought we should get a white rug? or Why does Jennifer Aniston always look so sad? See. I'm a deep thinker.

There's another question I ask myself with increasing frequency. For some reason it almost always hits when I'm refilling the Bug's glass. There's usually been some sort of protracted negotiation over what to drink, how much and whether or not finishing the drink will result in some sort of reward. "No juice. Milk or water. Which do you want? Lemonade counts as juice. Milk or water, those are the choices. No, you can't have a new glass. Do you want something to drink or not? That sort of thing.

It's in this humdrum-mom-in-charge-taking-care-business routine that the Big Question hits: "When did this become my life?"

Technically, it happened almost exactly three years ago when the Bug was born. I became a mother and I accepted a heap of new responsibilities, including but certainly not limited to refilling bottles and sippy cups and water glasses.

This is the same life that mothers all over the world take on every day. After a while, the diaper changing, the cup refilling, the dressing and undressing, the laundry? It's routine. It's just what you do because you're a mom.

The bigger question is: When did this become MY life? Because this what never what I had in mind when I pictured myself at 39.

I wasn't raised to be a mother. I didn't take Home Ec, I wasn't a Girl Scout and I never, ever remember my mom saying to me, "When you have children of your own one day......" My parents didn't do much to make parenting look like fun. In fact, my own mom seemed downright miserable most of the time so why in the hell would I willingly throw myself into THAT snake pit? My parents encouraged me to find a good man, travel, go to college, succeed in my career, but never to have children.

It's not that I don't like being a mother. Actually, I DO like it and I love my girls with all my heart. I just wish I were better at being a mother. I wish I had more "training" if there is such a thing. I wish it felt natural to me. I wish I had learned some good tricks or tips from my own parents, but locking the kids in the basement while I drink a 20-ounce Jack and Coke just isn't my parenting style. Yet.

Sometimes, Grinch and I ask each other, "Would you do it all over again?" The answer is usually "yes" which I guess is a pretty good sign. We're trying. We may not have been trained for this job, but we're learning as we go along. I'm learning a lot about being a parent. I'm learning a lot about myself.