Children are good for the soul

Whenever I am starting to feel like my day is going to hell in a handbasket, I stop and look at this video and crack up laughing.

Yesterday, on KJ Dell'Antonia's blog, she asked readers to write in and say what they like about parenting, since it seems we modern parents just love to whine about how hard parenting is. (It's true. We do. But that's because IT IS!)

And, without even thinking first about what I was going to say, or reading the other comments, this is what I wrote:


My children crack me up like almost no one else. I laugh when they're being adorable and silly, of course, but I also laugh when they are trying to pull one over on me and have NO CLUE that I have been there, done that a thousand times before. ("Hey Mom. Umm, I don't think I can eat any more vegetables because I think I have to sneeze, so I'm allergic maybe.") I laugh when I overhear the three of them having "serious" conversations with one another, using the few grown-up words they know. I laugh when they dance awkwardly and without abandon. I laugh when my 2-year-old admonishes me for ..well...for everything. She's always admonishing me in her little cartoon voice -- a harbinger of the teenage years to come, I guess. I laugh when they inadvertently thwart my husband's covert attempts to be "frisky" by yelling, "No hugging Mama!" I laugh when they belly laugh to the point of breathlessness at Frog and Toad or Quack from Peep in the Big Wide World. When I don't want to cry from how hard being a parent is -- sorry Lee Leander -- I just laugh all the time because of my three sweeties. I have never laughed so much as I have since becoming a mother 4 years ago. 

Looking at that video of Clair -- can't you see why that was my response?

They say that laughter is good for the soul. And my children make me laugh all the time. Therefore, all is well with my soul.

Hooray!