Daughters

We just got home from spending last night and today with my in-laws, who just finished building a new and rawther large house about 40 minutes from us. We're all exhausted, and two girls are already asleep -- and not a minute too soon! About two hours too late, as a matter of fact -- I think all the excitement, and sugar, got to both of them.

OK, can I just rant for a minute here? If you're at all inclined to be shocked or aggrieved by mommy complaints, just skip to the bottom, okay? Or maybe just don't read today's entry.

We begin with the words found on a sign in my midwife's office: "All women. All hormonal. All the time."

I was naive. How else do I say this? Did I really used to think, in the years leading up to and including my pregnancy with my second child, that I wanted a daughter, because, and I think my brain may have used these exact words, a daughter would be "easier to raise?" I'm thinking I must have been entertaining a grand delusion of one endless tea party in fetching Laura Ashley mother-and-daughter ensembles, one lifelong fabric softener commercial my angelic, white-clad offspring and I skipping in blissful slow motion through our days. I guess I actually believed, cue the bitter laugh, that because I was a female MYSELF, I would know, instinctively, how to raise a miniature version of myself.

Somehow these visions did not quite include the reality that most of my days are spent dealing with often-ferocious outpourings of emotion and high degrees of sensitivity. This is somewhat true with Caroline, more so with Eliza. (Okay okay, and very true with me.) On a typical day, especially one on which any of our variables is off (we're short 30 minutes of sleep; we ate refined sugar; the moon is aligned with the planets just so, etc.), we may suffer from not being able to eat the mango we requested Mommy buy because it is suddenly "too hard to chew." Mango, folks! Not steak! We may not be able to wear the (cotton knit) dress Mommy suggests because "it itches me." We may not be able to walk from the table to the bathroom for a Kleenex because "the floor is TOO COLD." We may bump our head and sound the siren for at least five minutes, we may experience gross injustice at the hand of our big brother and fall to the floor weeping, we may be given the WRONG FLAVOR of toothpaste and therefore feel completely unable to brush, etc. etc.

Sigh. It's a good thing I married someone with a large capacity for handling other people's emotions (I guess I gave him lots of practice). Too bad he can't be here 24 hours a day, for those times when it's a coin toss whether I'm going to either completely shut down or run screaming from the house. Surviving those moments involves supernatural power, I tell you. They also make me feel increasingly compassionate toward my own mother. Maybe that's the whole point.