Amy Writes

Every morning I wake up, pledging that today will be different. Today I will take deep breaths. I will count to ten. I will remain personally disengaged. I will be calm, consistent, gentle but firm. Today things will turn around. Today we will work together. Tonight, I will not be so exhausted and ready to cry. Then I step out of the bedroom. And it begins. When I worked at the Happiest Place on Earth, as most places of employment do, we had a breakroom. In the breakroom you could be whoever you wanted. You could eat, slouch, swear, remove annoying costume accessories, grow facial hair if you had time, vent about the crazy guest who just asked when the rain was going to stop or just frown if you needed to get a frown out of your system...the breakroom was a place of rest. Just one door separated us from "the stage," and once we walked through that door, we had to be on , all the time. Every morning, my bedroom door reminds me of that stage door. Once I walk through it ...

I am part of a very special group of friends. We love being together whenever possible. Almost all of us have kids at home all day long, so when we get together during the day there is a significant increase in the noise level.  As our kids get older, finishing a sentence - or sometimes even a whole conversation - is getting easier. But there are days when we are all taking our turns disappearing from the room to beat our children.  I'm kidding about beating our children.  But we do vanish regularly to have a word with this one, or to remove that one from a situation, or to exact some type of punishment for a certain unacceptable behavior. Sometimes, we have to disappear completely and go all the way home with a screaming child in tow. And no one looks twice. No one raises an eyebrow or tells us to take it easy or questions anyone's parenting decisions. We just shift over and start monitoring an extra kid or two while one of us is having to be the enforcer. And every now ...

I know the day is going to come. I know it. I live and breathe expectantly, anxiously. There will come a day when they won't want me around. I know that. I will be dropping off and picking up, instead of parking and hanging out. I'll be knocking before entering. I will have to call them to the dinner table rather than asking them to get out of the kitchen. I know there will come a time when they won't want to breathe my air or share my allotted cubic feet of space. They won't interrupt me to tell me they need to go to the bathroom/need a drink of water/heard a funny joke today/that they love me. They won't interrupt me at all. They won't come barging in to our bedroom before sunrise on Saturday mornings just to ask if they can put a movie on or start breakfast. They won't spill the mix while crowding me at the counter. They might not spill anything at all. We probably won't hear the same DVD playing over and over again. They probably won't enjoy (or ...