“I imagined sipping Arnold Palmers on the deck, casually thumbed through the newspaper we would obviously be mature enough to have delivered by then. What I did NOT imagine was me at 5:14 a.m., shushing children from my bedroom, shouting, ‘IN THIS FAMILY, CHILDREN DO NOT GET UP BEFORE 6!’ and shoving a small corner of my pillowcase in my ear. I think we can all agree that raising children isn’t exactly how we pictured it.”

‘Heaven forbid we decide to play hooky to visit Santa before our holiday break officially begins.’: Witty mom admits parenting isn’t at all what she imagined, ‘We haven’t breached the truancy threshold just yet’

‘I watched 2 kids smack my son. I actually found myself saying, ‘That’s not nice, stop!’
“I’ve never liked to tell a stranger’s kid off, but if you’re gonna pretend you can’t see it because you wanna sit and chat, then I’m gonna tell your child off.”

‘If my son is the bully of the playground and pushes your kid over when I’m not looking, please tell me.’: Mom’s daughter is bullied, urges other parents to be open to criticism about their own child
“I heard her say to another mother ‘why would she even tell me that?’…”

‘When you see a new mom come into your playgroup, TALK TO HER.’
“It’s not always a network of people helping us out. Some days we are all we have.”

‘To the mom who walked into playgroup and left without talking to anyone, despite wanting to.’
“Don’t be so hard on yourself.”