On the road again

I had a few hours to myself this morning since I overnighted in Cincinnati for an afternoon presentation. I used the time to study Hebrew and write this blog post about how my brief love affair with Twitter has fizzled. Minutes after I filed the post, it was up and picked up for syndication. Look for it this week in a small town newspaper near you.

As any mom who travels for work can tell you, the guilt over being gone is tempered by the comfort of having a hotel bed all to yourself and enjoying a shower and a cup of coffee without having to wipe anyone's butt or dispense Cheerios and juice.

Still, I felt a little extra guilt this morning when I rolled out from under 6 pillows and a goose down duvet to this email from Josh:

I woke up to the pitter patter of little feet. Zoe hops into bed - "scared" - and I lean over to the clock to see how much time I have left. It's only 12:05! So I tell Zoe it's too early for the big bed and tuck her back into her bed, where she goes back to sleep. I go to the bathroom and then back to bed. I'm woken up by the sound of Ada chanting "Mommy, up," which escalates until she's yelling for either of us. I check the clock: 12:25! I go in to her room, pat her, and put her down for bed. She screams for another ten minutes, then at 12:40 or I so I go in there to put her to bed again. She's tossed all the stuff out of her crib, but I re-pacify her and put her to bed. She screams again until 1:15, at which point I relent and take her to the big bed. She squirms and kicks on my chest until 2:00, so I give up, frustrated, and put her back in her crib. She screams until close to 3:00, when I grab her and take her to the big bed again. This time she and I fall asleep, and the only reason I know that is that somewhere around 5:30 she falls out of bed and wakes me up crying. She's fine, but Zoe rushes in to see what happens, hops in the big bed, and we all "rest" until 6:30, when we all get up.

Mommy angst

I was so excited to get my review copy of Even June Cleaver Would Forget the Juice Box in the mail yesterday. I'm only a few chapters in, but the book argues that mothers need to maintain their sanity--and themselves--by aiming a little less high. In this age of extreme parenting, internal and external expectations for moms are so elevated and unrealistic that we're setting ourselves up for failure. Society expects us to do everything right: Breastfeed exclusively. Practice babywearing. Make our own organic baby food. Put our families before our careers. Sign our children up for the right enrichment activities. Buy them the right toys. Send them to preschool, ensure they get into the right college. Keep them happy and entertained at all costs.

And most importantly, love every minute of it. Find utter fulfillment in being a mommy.

But guess what? Motherhood isn't a primrose path. It's one of the best choices I've ever made, don't get me wrong. But while it's cool to bitch about being stressed out, it's not socially acceptable to admit that playing with Play-Doh is boring, that we miss staying out or sleeping in...that as much as we'll always love our children, sometimes we don't like them very much.

Enter True Mom Confessions, an anonymous website where mothers can unload their mommy guilt. Some of the posts are funny. More than a few are sad. But what's even sadder is knowing that women need a deep, dark corner of the Internet to share their insecurities.