“There is an endearing tenderness in the love of a mother to a son that transcends all other affections of the heart.”
“The majority of my diet is made up of foods that my kid didn’t finish.”
“Every day when you’re raising kids, you feel like you could cry or crack up and just scream, ‘This is ridiculous!’ because there’s so much nonsense, whether it’s what they’re saying to you or the fact that there’s avocado or poop on every surface.”
“Sleep at this point is just a concept, something I’m looking forward to investigating in the future.”
“After we got home from the hospital, I didn’t shower for a week, and then John and I were like, ‘Let’s go out for dinner.’ I could last only about an hour because my boobs were exploding. When the milk first comes in, it’s like a tsunami. But we went, just to prove to ourselves that we could feel normal for a second.”
“When your children are teenagers, it’s important to have a dog so that someone in the house is happy to see you.”
“Sometimes I stand there going, ‘I’m not doing any of this right!’ And then I get this big man belch of her and I go, ‘Ah, we accomplished this together.’”
“All women become like their mothers. That is their tragedy. No man does. That’s his.”
“Twelve years later the memories of those nights, of that sleep deprivation, still make me rock back and forth a little bit. You want to torture someone? Hand them an adorable baby they love who doesn’t sleep.”
“I want my children to have all the things I couldn’t afford. Then I want to move in with them.”
“[Having four kids is] endless stuff. It’s endless entertainment, it’s endless stress, endless responsibility. Everyone’s at different ages and levels, everyone’s into different stuff. But everyone is into slime.”
“I’ve learned that it’s way harder to be a baby. For instance, I haven’t thrown up since the ‘90s and she’s thrown up twice since we started this interview.”
“No one told me I would be coming home in diapers, too.”
“Why don’t kids understand that their nap is not for them but for us?”
“Like all parents, my husband and I just do the best we can, and hold our breath, and hope we’ve set aside enough money to pay for our kids’ therapy.”
“You know how once you have kids you never ever pee by yourself again? At least one of them is always in there with you at all times.”
“If I wasn’t at work, I just wanted to stay home and party with my little man – and by ‘party’ I mean, of course, endless rounds of ‘Itsy Bitsy Spider’.”
“I always say if you aren’t yelling at your kids, you’re not spending enough time with them.”
“Stop saying, ‘We’re pregnant.’ You’re not pregnant. Do you have to squeeze a watermelon-sized person out of your lady hole? No.”
“The heart of a mother is a deep abyss at the bottom of which you will always find forgiveness.”
“I’ve conquered a lot of things … blood clots in my lungs – twice … knee and foot surgeries … winning Grand Slams being down match point … to name just a few, but I found out by far the hardest is figuring out a stroller!”
“Becoming a mom to me means you have accepted that for the next 16 years of your life, you will have a sticky purse.”
“Children are like crazy, drunken small people in your house.”
“Happy is the son whose faith in his mother remains unchallenged.”
“A mother’s love doesn’t make her son more dependent and timid; it actually makes him stronger and more independent.”
“A man loves his sweetheart the most, his wife the best, but his mother the longest.”
Irish Proverb
Image: Wisconsin Historical Society
Chief Writing Wolf 