The Mommy Chronicles

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My name is Krista and I am a mother of two children ages 5 and 7.  The ever-so-kind editor of this newspaper approached me at a recent wedding my family attended and asked me if I would be interested in doing a mommy blog.  I have writing experience, and 7 short years of mommy experience so I jumped at the chance to do it. The editor must have seen my two unusually well-behaved children at the wedding and assumed I had this whole parenting thing down to a science.  I didn’t want to disappoint her and tell her that I am often the mom arguing, screaming, and sometimes crying as my children push my limits on a daily basis and leave me asking why is it that I decided to have children. I can say that I thought long and hard about having children.  In fact, I was married 7 years before my husband and I decided to have children.  We never discussed having children before we got married (not something I recommend), we always just figured things out as we went along.   My husband and I enjoyed stress free ski and scuba vacations, quiet dinners, staying up late, sleeping in, going to the beach and actually sitting in a chair, reading, writing and all the other pleasures that childless adults experience. I knew of several reasons why I didn’t think I would make good parent.  I am cranky if I don’t get at least eight hours of sleep, I have limited patience, I like a neat house, and would stop to pet a cute puppy before I would reach for a baby to hold.  At least I was able to acknowledge my shortcomings, something that actually proved helpful once I became a parent. However, I was slowly becoming aware of how much children loved my husband.  At parties they gathered around him waiting in line to be tossed high in the air.  He had the ability to make the most introverted kids come out of their shell and join in a game of football.  He was the one giving piggy back rides, throwing pitches, pushing a swing, all the while looking like he was actually enjoying himself.   Still he was not pushing to have kids and neither one of us seemed able to make up our minds, so we continued to live our happy, yet childless, life.   I thought in order to know if you were ready to have children you had to be one of those people who couldn’t imagine your life without them or who stopped to look at babies in strollers or who loved to hold a newborn.  I knew that person would never be me.
 
However, there was a part of me who thought that my husband and I did have some good things to offer to another human being.  If nothing else, we both had dark hair and blue eyes and I hated to see those genes go to waste.  So, we decided to take the plunge into parenthood.  9 months later we were rewarded with a vivacious baby girl and two and a half years after that a sweet baby boy.  And that is when life got interesting.

Krista Newbert

I hope you enjoy my perspective on parenthood on a variety of topics in the future.   I am going to take a nap now. Until next time…