Parenting...

It's hard. How do you really know if you are doing a good job? If you are raising polite, kind hearted young women, who will hold the door for a sweet elderly woman because they would want someone to hold the door for their Mom or their Grandma?  How do you know if they are going to see the glass half full or wonder why its always half empty? How do you know if when someone asks them to do something their gut is telling them is wrong, that they will have the confidence and strength to go with their gut?

And how at this age do you teach them to tell the truth? To not take Jelly Beans off the counter without asking? To remove their finger from their sisters ear canal the first or second time you ask? And how do you teach them to keep the bath water IN the bath tub? Or that pudding doesn't double as furniture polish? And how do you show them and teach them that no matter what, come rain or shine, for better or for worse that their Mommy above everyone else will love them more than humanily possible?

The books...the books, they just don't prepare you for parenting.  Both the highs and the lows, the books just don't even come close.  The pull they will forever have on your heart...the comfort their smile gives you even when your blood is boiling and you want to scream...the sound of their laughter and the way it can stop you in your tracks and make you realize that life isn't that serious afterall. Or the 432 times you have to tell your daugther to pick up her coat she threw on the ground and has now walked over several times? Or how to clean a stuffed Penguin that is no longer black & white, but now has stripes of red, thanks to our little Pablo Picasso?  How do you teach them compassion? How do you teach them that without organization and order Mommy's skin starts to crawl? Or how it feels when they reach up and grab your hand, just to hold it as you walk them into school?

If anyone has these answers, you know where to find me...scrubbing the pudding off the table, soaking Penny in the hopes the red fades away, picking up a few coats and last but not least, tucking them in long after they have gone off to dreamland...pausing to take it all in, and reminding myself how blessed and grateful I am to be their Mommy.