Parenting

My favorite recent new parent Jennie, has been posting about the difficulties of parenting. I so sympathize. Parenting is so much harder and more rewarding that I ever expected.

Hearing your child scream helplessly, seeing their glazed eyes the first time they are really sick, watching them tumble down a few stairs are all such heartbreakers. Parenting is full of this kind of heart break; it proves just how much you are head over heels in love.

I've learned so much about myself since having children. I never knew how much I dislike being bitten or contradicted until having children. I used to consider myself a patient and calm person, not anymore.

In a college class on the topic of human sexuality, the idea that the relationship between husband and wife changed dramatically after child birth was a strange mystery. I remember thinking at the time, "I can't imagine why marital satisfaction rates would decrease, how peculiar." Hey, not that I'm not happily married, but when someone goes days without a conversation that isn't interrupted in on way or another it changes things.

On the rewarding side, there is nothing so wonderful as a pair of happy toddlers nearly knocking you down with their hugs when you come home after a hard day of work. There is nothing like your child telling their first joke, catching their first fish, or learning some new skill.