Parenting: One Step Closer to Unhappiness.

If there was a fly on the wall in my home today I think it would have stamped my ticket to hell faster than the devil himself. Some of the highlights that came out of my mouth today included:

"It's a good thing you're cute, otherwise I would have killed you by now."

"Dave, do you think there's something wrong with her? "

"Why can't you be like other babies?"

"She's both the reason why I want to live and why I want to live no more."

"I hate my life."

I know by now you're probably thinking that I'm the worst mom ever, and I probably am, but I'm willing to bet that I'm not the first or last mom to utter such horrible things about such an innocent little being. The truth of the matter is that being a parent is hard work. So hard in fact that unless you have kids, you can't grasp how life-altering the experience is. Having kids is something that many people work towards. We go to school, work on our careers, get married, gain some measure of financial stability and then have kids. It seems like a logical progression, right? Right. This is the way our society operates after all. The problem, however, is that by the time we get to the 'having kids' stage, we've been alive for a really long time. So long that we've grown accustomed to our lives. Dave and I dated for 6 years before getting married and then after being married for 3 years we had Daphne. That's 9 years of habits. 9 years of date nights, late nights, sleep-ins and spontaneous and awesome memories. We pretty much did whatever we wanted when we wanted. Then along came Daphne and it was all over.

I'll never forget the day I realized just how life-altering having a baby was. I was sitting in our glider, Daphne just a few days old lay asleep in my arms. Dave came into the room and I looked at him and started to cry. I think at first Dave thought I was crying because I was so happy, but then I said it: "I miss you." At that moment I realized that my life as I knew it was over and that the Dave I married and the Eve he married we no more. We were parents now. We were no longer Dave and Eve, but rather we were Dave, Eve and Daphne. Daphne would get all our time and attention. When people called they wouldn't ask how we were doing, they would ask how Daphne was doing. When people stopped us to talk on the street it wasn't because they thought we seemed like good people, it's cause they thought our baby was cute. We are now invisible, we no longer get the most presents under the Christmas tree or the first hug when we get off the airplane. We don't go out for fancy dinners anymore; instead we choose restaurants based on how baby-friendly they are and not how good the food is. We are servants to this little girl named Daphne and sadly, Daphne already knows that.

She's at that age where she's starting to learn that her actions cause reactions. The man in the waiting room at the doctor's office the other day summed it up the best. When talking about his 16 month old daughter and his 4 year old son he said that the daughter gathers attention negatively whereas his son gathers attention positively. In other words, the daughter is constantly misbehaving to be noticed whereas the son gets his attention by being well-behaved. Daphne is definitely like this man's daughter. She is happiest when she's being bad. And yes, 11 month olds can be bad! When she's not biting you, she's either throwing or spitting her food at you. Tossing her bottle over and over again to see how many times you'll pick it up. Yelling if you don't give her what she wants when she wants it and crying if she doesn't get her way. Daphne is going to be a kid capable of throwing the worst temper tantrums; my goal is to never let it go that far. Wish me luck!

In addition to being bad, Daphne is also very much attached to Dave and me. She started having separation anxiety when she was 5 months old and since then it's only gotten worse. Today for example, I couldn't go to the kitchen to fill her sippy cup without her freaking out (I'm talking about a distance of 10 feet where I'm still partially visible). She screamed bloody murder every time I got up to do something and when I was playing with her she couldn't just sit there or play on her tummy, she had to either be sitting in my lap or standing up at the coffee table practicing her transitions from it to me. Now don't get me wrong, I love playing with Daphne, but I also like being able to sit back and watch her learn on her own. I also like to talk on the phone or catch up on correspondence. If that makes me a bad mom, so be it.

So long story shot, Daphne was really annoying today. I was happy to receive my first issue of Parenting, The Early Years as in it they had an article on happiness. They quoted the cover title of an issue of last year's New York magazine: "I love my children. I hate my life." I looked this article up and it's a good read. The author talks about how many studies have found that parents are less happy than their childless counterparts. At first thought, you may think that the studies are wrong, but when you really sit down and think about it, maybe parents are less happy, on the surface at least. These studies measure happiness on a day-to-day basis, where the participants answer a series of questions that measure their level of happiness. Of course parents will come off being less happy, having kids is hard and kids are annoying, let's face it! Does that mean that we're actually less happy? I'm not sure. When I think back to today in a week's time I'm not going to remember that Daphne was super annoying and caused me to say and think such horrible things, I'm going to remember that we went to the beach and sat watching the dogs play at the dog park. I'm going to remember her nestling her head in my chest for what seemed like forever and just enjoying being outside in the beautiful Vancouver weather. I'm going to remember that when Dave and I put her to bed tonight, she learned that when she turns the last page of her story book we say 'The. End.' in time, no matter how fast or slow she turns the page. Studies can't measure memories and the positive memories I have of our little family far outweigh the negative experiences I seem to have on what seems to be an almost daily basis. Does that make sense?