Photos are deceiving. You would never know that only mere seconds before this one was shot, Scout took the opportunity to beat up his baby cousin…. while everyone was looking right at him… waiting to sing “Happy Birthday”.

You also can’t tell that he used the serving set to eat his cake and then, an hour later, threw up all over my aunt and uncle’s living room rug…

Don’t mind me. It’s my fourth birthday and I can be a punk to whomever I please. I’m the KING OF THE WORLD!

(Lou: “You’re giving Brother FIRE?! I’m new here and even I know that’s a terrible idea…”)

Now, back to our regularly scheduled programing…

I sat on my recent post on second-time motherhood for over a month. I was afraid to post it. Yet, I couldn’t seem to write about anything else until I did. So Sunday night, I just closed my eyes and hit “publish”.

The truth is, for whatever reason, I’m phobic of appearing weak or stupid or lesser than. Not that I think having a tough time with motherhood makes one “weak” or “stupid”. Let’s face it. Raising kids IS tough and anyone who says otherwise, including my extended family, is also phobic.

If someone else had broken down and expelled the previous rant to me, I  certainly wouldn’t have thought less of them. I would have happily listened for as long as it took to make them feel better. I have no idea why I  felt  as if I was imposing by doing the same. It’s silly. I know.

I soaked in all of your words of encouragement yesterday and today. In other words, THANK YOU!

There are times when I feel fine. You could even say HAPPY and resolved to keep moving forward, knowing that life as it is at this very moment is temporary. Fleeting. Any moment, I could blink and my children will be all grown up.

I  wake up, embrace the fact that nothing will be accomplished here today, and simply carry on with other plans. I pack a lunch, head to the park with the kids, maybe even stop by story time or Target on my way. It’s not like I have to rush home to put anyone to bed… Ppfff

Then, there’s the rest of time… the dark moments when I feel trapped, alone, crushed….

Days like yesterday when Mr. D left for work before I could shower and get ready. I was still in my pajamas at four in the afternoon when he called to say that he’ll be going back to working weekends and late nights by the end of the week.

It’s these dark moments which consume me whole.

I should take a moment and recognize Mr. D in all this. My husband is amazing. He comes home never knowing which wife will be there to greet him– the surly, weepy, stabby one or the breezy, happy, funny one.

(Mostly, it’s the ranty one. Never the sultry, “I drugged the kids so they’d sleep through the night” *wink, wink* one.)

He  frequently gets up with Lou at night and tries to give me a “break” as often as possible, but lately he’s been losing it too.

The other day, I found half a load of laundry in the dryer… and no, I don’t mean he didn’t wash a full load. I mean, I opened the washer to find the OTHER HALF of the laundry still damp, possibly moldy.

A few days before, I reached to put a dirty diaper in the pail, only to find that the pail had been relocated next to the front door- – still full of stinky…

Mr. D had moved it there, possibly intending to empty it on his way out the door or maybe, it was an elaborate hint that I should empty it. Who knows? It was just one of the many comical little aggravations in my day that makes me feel more like “ringleader” than “wife and mother”.

I can laugh about it because I know exactly what happened. It’s the same thing that happens to me multiple times daily. I’ll be rushing to finish something. Someone will scream and it’s crisis diverted…

I can laugh about it  because I’m not being completely overwhelmed by it right now.

Over the past month, I’ve made a few changes to make things easier to bear. I hired a cleaning service.  I’ve been trying to overcome my deep-seated trust issues and hire a baby-sitter, too. I gave up on family dinners and afternoon naps. Opting instead to feed the kids earlier (as if Lou could be kept waiting) and put them to bed earlier.

And the biggest and best-est change of all… Mr. D finished his project and went back to normal work hours.

Well, that one lasted about two weeks.

Now, with long nights and zero weekENDS ahead,  I feel like I’m slipping deeper into the crevasse.

All parents have the highest of aspirations for their children.

Doctor, teacher, President of the United States… but the next Kobayashi?

If fate were decided by talent and talent was determined at the age of eight months, then my daughter definitely has a shot at winning international titles in competitive eating.

She greedily gobbles up all of her dinner, grabs a whole chicken leg from mine, and will still eye her big brother’s plate for more…  and she doesn’t even have teeth yet!

Barely over 50th percentile at her last check-up, she’s doing her best to catch up one chubby fistful of Cheerios at a time. Honestly, I don’t even know where she puts it in her tiny little frame!

It’s been tough to keep up with her demands, which is why I was thrilled to be given a chance to write about Annabel Karmel’s Top 100 Baby Purees and Top 100 Finger Foods for the Silicon Valley Moms Blog.

Getting my daughter to try new and adventurous tastes is clearly NOT an issue for me. My biggest problem is knowing what I can feed her… As in, what’s “allowed”?

You’d think I would know all that already, having had an older child and all. Except that my son never had home-made baby food.

Yeah. I’m sure this will somehow play into a future  laundry list of how I loved one child more than the other blah, blah, blah… Homemade baby food or not, he will always have three years and four months of blissful “only child”-hood on his little sister.  So there!

In the throes of new motherhood (and for a short while, working motherhood), I felt like I had enough on my plate.  The last thing I wanted was to spend my Sunday afternoons pureeing vegetables and neatly portioning them out into ice cube trays.

This is not to say that I would have been opposed to the idea. After all, I was pretty strict about which types of jarred foods he ate. And, once upon a simpler time, I did enjoy cooking. Making my own baby food wouldn’t have been such a leap.

However, an allergy scare early on turned me off the idea entirely. A stern reprimand from our pediatrician made me paranoid about trying anything “different” or “new”. So I stuck with what was considered tried and true. (read: safe and boring)

Knowing what I know now, I wish I had at least tried to make Fillet of Fish with Orange Sauce or Tomato Cauliflower and Carrot with Basil for my son. I’m sure he would have loved it as much as his sister did when I served it to her for lunch today. Having hand selected and prepped the ingredients myself, I get much more satisfaction from knowing exactly what goes into my kids’ food.

I’m not embarrassed to admit that I used store-bought baby foods because they were convenient and made my life easier. Scout certainly hasn’t suffered because of it. He’s bright, happy, healthy, and not shy about demanding a hummus-broccoli sandwich instead chicken nuggets. (NOW, Mommy!)

I’m more ashamed to admit that I didn’t trust my own instincts when it came to knowing what’s best for my kid.

Disclosure: I received  free copies Annabel Karmel’s Top 100 Baby Purees and Top 100 Finger Foods to taste test on my kids and write about for the Silicon Valley Moms Blog. The opinions are my own. You can purchase your copies of Top 100 Finger Foods and Top 100 Baby Purees by Annabel Karmel here.

Whenever I hear another mom talk about her “perfect” baby, I want to punch her in the throat… but I can’t.

For many reasons, of course, but mainly because I used to BE that mom.

Oh yes, my first born was (and in many ways still is) such an easy kid.

One of those mythical self-schooled self-soother, he started sleeping through the night (and in his crib) at six weeks old. He never had colic or reflux or any of those miserable things. He napped on a schedule, ate with gusto, and was content to play on his own.

He made motherhood a dream and I naturally took all of the credit. Mistaking luck for competence, I floated on my cloud of maternal perfection, brightly dispensing advice and comfort to others.

I had it ALL figured out.

Now before you try to punch ME in the throat, let me assure you that I have had of my comeuppance in the form of my second child.

She has taken everything I know… er, thought I knew about motherhood… and wiped that smug look off my face with it.

I don’t know if she’s necessarily more demanding than any other typical newborn or if I was just unprepared to handle a child who’s allergic to napping and so needy of constantly being held. However, I do know that my bad feelings and stress aren’t entirely her fault.

I was three months pregnant when we moved to California, leaving behind a great support system of family and friends in both Texas and London. By the time, Lou was born I had plenty of ” casual acquaintances”,  but still no real friends nearby (despite all of my best attempts…)

Fortunately, family members were able to stay with us while I recovered from my c-section. I was very grateful for that, but shortly after they left, Mr. D started putting in more hours at work.

The late nights piled on top of early mornings, and eventually weekends as well. Feeling helpless and isolated, I was left  on my own to figure out how to manage to two kids and a household with absolutely no down time.

Did I mention… NEVER NAPS?

Then again, how could she? On the random occasion that I could successfully get her to calm down and close her eyes, along comes Scout with a cow bell I could have SWORN I burned and buried just the day before.

Eventually, the housework didn’t just slide. It completely fell off the radar. Mr. D tried to help as much as he could when he was home, but since that was rare, it really wasn’t much help at all.

I hardly slept. I barely ate.  I cried a lot.  (So did the kids.) My body ached from nursing on demand and carrying Lou everywhere, but it was either that or listen to her screaming. Lou’s screaming alone wouldn’t have been so terrible. I would have even let her cry it out, if her crying hadn’t also triggered an equal or greater response from Scout…

“I. DON’T. LIKE. THE. BABY. CRYING,” he would howl over her. Then she would cry louder. He would scream louder until I plugged her with a boob and distracted him with TV…

At Lou’s four month check-up, I reached out to our pediatrician. When I told him that there were times when I just wanted to wrap the car around a tree just so screaming would stop, he  basically told me, “She’s a baby. Babies cry. DUH. Besides, girls are more high maintenance… “

Although it probably would have be a tremendous comfort, I didn’t have the desire or energy to reach out to friends from home. I talked to them so infrequently that when I did, the I last thing I wanted to do was dwell on the negative.

As for my online friends… There were so many nights when I sat brain-dead in front of my computer, wanting to pour my soul out onscreen, but I would get overwhelmed and end up saying nothing at all.

Other nights, I would actually write something, but would hesitate to “publish” only to wake up the next day to learn of a massive earthquake hitting Haiti or read about someone who just lost a job, a home, a child to cancer…

Then I felt like a total a-hole for complaining about my two healthy children, my gainfully employed husband, and our four intact walls.

These past few months, the word “failure” has loomed heavily on my mind. There are just so many people  in the world dealing with far more challenging things than having a newborn and a three-year-old, yet here I was falling apart  over it.

“Your sister-in-law has THREE kids and her husband is never home. If she can do it all on her own and never complain, surely you can handle this…” Mr.D’s mom says  to me quite frequently.

I believe what she means is, “You can do it! I know you can,” but to me, the message comes across more like, “Stop whining. Why are you such an effing moron? Why can’t you handle this? Everyone else can.”

Then my other sister-in-law sends me a note via Facebook about how she never had any help either. Even though that’s a complete farce, it sets the tenor for how well received my “weakness” is  among family.

On the other hand, I have one younger sister in full-on wedding mode and another having  her own issues with life. Neither one has kids. So the only person I  could vent to was my mom, who offered me the same “advice” she offers for just about everything.

“You need to pray and offer you suffering to Jesus…blah, blah, blah….prayer…. blah,blah, blah…. Jesus.”

I assured her that I have prayed. Oh, how I have prayed… and wept… giant sorrowful tears beside my daughter’s crib, begging for help, begging for mercy, begging that she… Just. Fall. Asleep.

It’s not as if I expected angels to fly down and wipe my kids’ butts (although that would help tons. Thanks.) When I prayed, it was always for more patience, a bit of clarity, a second wind…  In other words, things that never came.

“MOTHER, prayer is not working! What can I DO?” I would yell over the phone.

Weary of my blasphemy (and probably regretting the twelve years of Catholic school, followed by four years of private Catholic university that she funded), she finally offered some advice I could use.

“Maybe you should stop expecting help to come,” she said and just like that I went from feeling helpless to feeling hopeless.

So in case you’ve been wondering why I haven’t been updating my blog so much these past few month…

This is where I’ve been.

This past Saturday, I was having a late night nosh with new friends when the conversation turned to…

What else? Brunch. In particular, favorite places to brunch. It’s one of the first things I like to know about people when I meet them.

Hello. How are you? What’s your name? Where’s your favorite place to have brunch?

Brunch is, by far, one of my most favorite things in the whole world. I love it better than Christmas. (So you can only imagine how I feel about Christmas brunch!)

The following morning I woke up with a craving for a latte and a warm, fluffy chocolate croissant, but there was no time for that. We had to get the kids ready for church and out the door.

All through Mass, my mind kept wandering back to spinach eggs benedict, roasted potatoes, coffee…

I was so looking forward to when I’d get to sit and relax at my favorite brunch spot, where someone else would be doing the cooking and the schlepping.

Unfortunately, Scout woke up that same morning with a craving for chaos.

He did just fine at Mass, but the second we stepped into the cafe, he resumed his reign of terror- running away, banging on the display cases, screeching as loud as human ears can take…

We coaxed him several times to (please) stop, which he clearly took as a dare. Fed up and knowing exactly where this was going, I stormed out of the restaurant before we could be seated. “We’re leaving,” I announced to Mr. D and the kids.

“But I’m soooooo hungry. Why won’t you feed me? Please. Please. Please. I’ll be good.” he cried and begged as  Mr. D carried him to the car amidst the curious gawks and sympathetic looks of strangers.

Mr. D pitched me his “It’s-up-to-you” look and at that moment, I wanted so much to cave– to just say, “Oh okay. Let’s go back in, but only if you *promise* to be good”.

If only it were that easy. Instead I found myself at one of those pivotal parenting moments when there is no turning back. I had to stick to my guns or risk forever losing any mommy cred…

(i.e. teaching him that you can be a total punk, but if you whine and beg and invoke enough sympathy among strangers, you get your way.)

So we went home, stopping at a produce stand along to way to pick up apples and broccoli, which are a poor, poor substitute when what you really want (all you really wanted) was a warm, fluffy chocolate croissant.

All of my life, I’ve been told that parenthood equals sacrifice. So when I became a mom, I willingly gave up the huge things: My career. My social life. My flat (enough) tummy. Sleep.

I thought I could at least hold on to the little things such as ENJOYING A FREAKING PASTRY.

*What? Has that not become a thing yet? Well, it should! Also a children’s book, by the way.