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.
People: October 2004 Archives
Archbishop Desmond Tutu was on "The Daily Show" recently. What a perfect gentleman. I wish all the world's leadership looked and acted more like him.
Stewarts best line was about how Tutu was the second Nobel Peace Prize winner on his show. The first was Henry Kissinger, whose Peace Prize was given "ironically." I love John Stewarts show.
