In the last few weeks, my son, now eleven months old, has blown us away with suddenly knowing the meanings of dozens of words, as well as the sounds and actions associated with them. We ask him what the lion says and he goes “raaaaawr”; we ask him to retrieve Goodnight Moon, and he will; we ask him what the alligator does and he opens and closes his hands like tiny snapping jaws. (That little trick earned him a sticker from the alligator docent at the aquarium today!) We’ve been using the ASL sign for “more” since we first sat him in his highchair and spooned soupy rice cereal into his toothless mouth last spring, and at last he’s signing back to us–well, his interpretation, anyway, tapping the heels of his hands together instead of the fingertips, which very well might be the sign for “Please stop, as I do not like these green beans, mother,” but I guess we’ll never know for sure, will we?, at least not until he starts forming complete sentences. Tough beans, kid! Maybe next year! (If I sound bitter, it’s because I suspect he’s been signing “milk” nonstop this week simply because he can and not because he’s STILL HUNGRY OMG MY BOOBS CAN’T TAKE MUCH MORE OF THIS ABUSE SIMILAC TAKE ME AWAY.)

These new feats of personhood leave me proudly heart-swollen, of course (and also painfully chest-swollen), but they also make me go slackjawed with terror because, woah nelly, if he can understand “book” and “milk” and “shoe,” what other colorful four-letter words does he hear fly out of my mouth? My better half solidifies his better-halfness every time he catches me talking blue around our baby–”rats,” “phooey,” and “dagnabbit” will celebrate a revival in our house if he has anything to say about it–and although I haven’t quite gotten the hang of it this new church-lady language, I am trying (sometimes).
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The other day I realized how many women I know went to school to become nurses only to trade in their careers shortly thereafter to become full-time stay-at-home moms. My unenlightened knee-jerk reaction was to mourn the time and effort and money they spent going to school and jumping through hoops and suffering the trial-by-fire of on-the-job medical training only to end up doing something that requires no training, no degree, not even a basic skills test or competency exam. What a waste! And then I slapped myself upside the head because, hello, going to nursing school before becoming a mother is downright genius. What better background to have as a mom than expertise in bandaging wounds, bringing down fevers, and kissing owies (although I don’t think that last bit’s part of the standard nursing school curriculum).
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Growing up, I always knew I would work for a living, even after getting married, and even after having children. I got my first job when I was fourteen, and from that moment on I’ve taken pride in earning a paycheck, interacting with coworkers and customers, and applying my skills, even if I didn’t always love my job and some days the only skill I applied was deftly stuffing hundreds of envelopes with nary a papercut. When I got pregnant last year, returning to work after my son’s birth was never a question; I would work, I had to work, I wanted to work. I didn’t start questioning this non-decision decision until after I became a mother and I realized that, for all the good having a job does to my bank account and my psyche, it’s also really, really HARD.
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I never thought I’d become one of those women whose priorities so obviously shifted once I became a mother. Of course I’d want my family to think they were my top priority (because they are), but I also thought I could make my bosses and coworkers feel like work was my top priority, even if common sense told them it couldn’t possibly be. I just thought that in the best of all possible worlds I could be everything to everyone—the best mom, the best employee—and no one would feel like they were getting the short end of the me stick (except maybe myself, but oh, isn’t martyrdom the curse of the modern mommy?).

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You’ve read all the parenting books, you’ve talked to every mother on your street, you’ve surfed mommyblogs until your eyes crossed..and you still don’t know what the heck you’re doing half the time. We talk about parenting by “instinct,” but it’s time we call it like it is: mostly we’re all just parenting by accident, some of them bad, some of them good.
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Last week my better half sent me an email titled “Boycott Isotoner?” with a link to this article, about one company’s legal troubles following its firing of a female employee who was pumping breastmilk while on the clock. The case went all the way to Ohio’s Supreme Court, which ultimately ruled that the firing was legal because—woman or not, breastfeeding mother or not—this mother-employee had taken unauthorized breaks to pump during her shift and was therefore in violation of company policy. As a breastfeeding and working mother myself, my hackles were of course immediately raised, but then, when I read that the woman admitted to taking unapproved breaks to pump, I almost slapped my forehead and yelled “duh” at the computer screen, because this—this—is the sort of thing that gives working mothers a bad name and makes it hard for us to parent in the ways we want to, whether that involves breastfeeding while working or even going back to work after having children at all. No wonder we’re accused of seeking special treatment! But then I read on.
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Last week an email went out on my neighborhood’s listserve asking for mothers interested in forming a babysitting co-op. Two mothers would be in charge of watching everyone’s kids for a few hours one day a week, and then the next week another two mothers would take over the babysitting shift; with a minimum of four people in the group, each mom would get a few hours off every other week to do as she pleased. The woman trying to organize the co-op lives around the corner, has a daughter the same age as my son, and seems like a nice person. Even better, here, finally, was my chance to foist my beloved but wearying child onto a third party and steal some time for myself (even if I waste it on something dumb like much-belated spring cleaning), and without it costing a penny.

Yes, it sounded like a great solution, so then why was I composing a mental list of all the reasons it was a bad idea for us (the baby would get sick; how could I trust these other mothers I didn’t know?; my schedule changes too much and I wouldn’t want to flake out on anyone; what if my son went missing in someone’s house now that he’s mobile and fast enough to get down the hall and stuck under a table, NOT THAT I WOULD KNOW ANYTHING ABOUT THAT)?
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We’re smart women, educated consumers, technologically savvy, and always on the lookout for the quickest/easiest/most efficient way to do anything, especially if we think it will help us do what’s best for our kids. But can we all agree that we (the collective, consumerist “we”) sometimes get carried away? That we’re so over-primed—by the media, by our peers, by our own worst fears—to jump on the newest bandwagon and buy the latest gadgets that it’s starting to get a little out of control? This afternoon my better half directed me to this article from Reader’s Digest that pokes fun at some of the newfangled “must-have” parenting products available. The larger implication here—that companies prey on our insecurities, that marketers take advantage of our instinct to protect our families—is a serious topic and an important one, but today I’ll admit that my brain was just fried enough that I couldn’t muster even a modicum of moral outrage and so instead just read the article and nodded and laughed at what fools we mortals be.  
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A familiar scene at our house: I tell my spouse that I have to go check my email real quick-like, and then before I know it it’s forty-five minutes later and he’s standing in the doorway with a red-eyed baby and a cartoon exclamation point quivering in the air above his head. It’s obvious what I’ve been doing: I start with Very Important Work Email and then, inevitably, I take that one itty-bitty sidestep over to personal email and then, what the heck, it’s blog emails and blog comments and Flickr, and then, whee!, it’s a full-force backslide into YouTube and iPhoto and iMovie and iTunes. Down the Internet rabbit-hole. iCarumba.
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I love being a mother at a time when there’s such widespread conversation and openness about the hard parts, the ugly parts, the unshowered-for-days parts of parenthood. Entire communities are built on such openness–this site being one of them–and it’s always a comfort to know that whatever I’m going through, I’m not alone. But sometimes I wonder if sharing the bad has made it hard for us to also share the good. Sometimes I feel that truth in parenting has come to mean we only dish about the dark side, that being honest only ever means exposing our worst selves, and that no one wants to hear about the time you kicked butt, took names, and did something awesomely, perfectly right. 

What do you think? Does it sometimes feel like we have to talk only about the bad stuff, the blunders, and the downright failures in order to be part of the motherhood sisterhood?
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