parenthood

Although the infertile are entitled to sour grapes, it's against the rules, isn't it, to actually have a baby and spend any time at all on that banished parallel life in which you didn't.

On first hearing that little voice _ as fine and friable, I felt, as cotton thread, the impact on my soul was that of the highest magnitude of earthquake, those that occur every hundred years, say, or every thousand. The old shell I called myself cracked and was swallowed by a sudden crevasse, and just as suddenly was lost in the commotion.

Throughout history, the most brutal cultures have always been distinguished by maternal-infant separation.

Confession: Having kids did not fix me. I was not somehow more whole, less botched-up, or more certain just because I had a kid... I was still me, with all my holes and problems and questions - only now I was also exhuasted and had a lot more laundry to do.

I want to promise you / permanence, my constant orbit, but even continents / are revisions. I am only your diving bell in water / hemmed by shifting plates.

I can speak of our baby like this to no one else. Who but his father would linger over the exact width of his gummy little smile or the blueness of his eyes, or the sweetness of his little lick of tawny hair on his forehead?

It's tough being AWESOME all the time, but the kids need someone to look up to!

I loved Duncan and I loved being his mother but I wasn't sure I was prepared to be only his mother. Before we were even married, when Russell and I had gotten our dog, Humbert, I had walked him early one morning, and as I stood on a line for coffee, someone had offered him a dog treat. "I always ask the mommy first," she said, looking at him expectantly. "Oh, I'm not his mother," I said, "I'm just his...friend," and she looked at me with complete contempt. "You're his mother," she had scolded, "Poor dog.

Know the rules of child rearing!!Rule one: Physical strength!Rule two: Physical strength!There are no rules three or four, but rule five is physical strength!

People say that when a baby is crying the paternal grandmother will say, "The baby is crying, you should feed her," and the maternal grandmother will say, "Why is that baby crying so much, making her mom so tired?

An unemployed father is always considered more detrimental to the family than an unemployed mother, and at the same time, child psychologists kept coming up with new responsibilities for parents that seemed to fall to the mother alone.

Happiness is when you realize that your kids have grown up to be AWESOME people!

It's quite sad that so many children go through life unsure whether their parents love them or not.

I don't think it matters how many parents you've got, as long as those who are around make their presence a good one.

Disappointment is part of parenthood, Jasper. The trick is learnin' to love your kids even when they disappoint you.

Children see beauty in everything.

That first pregnancy is a long sea journey to a country where you don't know the language, where land is in sight for such a long time that after a while it's just the horizon - and then one day birds wheel over that dark shape and it's suddenly close, and all you can do is hope like hell that you've had the right shots.

I didn't find out until I became a father. You don't just LOVE your children. You FALL in love with them.