Aside from love, I think that guilt is probably the strongest, most universal emotion that parents experience.  We feel guilty from the time our babies are born, about everything: for not breastfeeding long enough, for leaving them on a Saturday morning to go to the gym, for going back to work, for letting them watch TV, for keeping them in a wet diaper for too long, and on and on and on. 

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I have to say, my feelings about Valentine’s Day are beginning to change. 

I used to be one of those super anti-Valentine’s Day people.  Like, when people would ask me what my husband and I were doing for Valentine’s Day, I’d scoff and be like, uh, nothing, because it’s stupid.  And it is stupid, actually, on a lot of levels. 

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There are lots of difficult things you have to figure out when you’re a parent. For example, how do you clean puke out of a shag carpet?  What do you do with a pee-soaked mattress?  Also, is it possible to get marbles out of a toilet?  But oh, if only all of the problems of parenthood could be easily solved with a quick search of ehow, or a frantic call to Roto Rooter. 

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For someone who’s a so-called “mommy blogger,” I don’t read a lot of mommy blogs.  I probably should.  It’s probably something other mommy bloggers do, in order to keep current, to stay on top of what’s going on in the “blogosphere.” 

But a) I don’t really have time, and b) I find that, for me, it feels more authentic to just write about my own life, rather than trying to manufacture something based on whatever happens to be trending at the moment. 

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Family is such a strange thing in the age of divorce.  My mother remarried when I was in my twenties, and I gained three new step-siblings as a result.  But because we were all adults, living in various parts of the world, I’ve never met them.  Couldn’t pick them out of a line-up.  My mother-in-law also re-married after my husband’s father died, and my husband picked up three new step-siblings, as well.  But because we all live in Los Angeles, his step-siblings are as close to me real ones.  

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Here is the conversation I have with my son three months before a given sport is meant to begin:

Me:  Do you want to play [soccer, football, basketball, baseball] this year?  Because sign-ups are now.

Him:  Yeah.

Here is the conversation I have with my son three minutes before the first day of practice for any given sport:

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There are certain moments in life that, while they’re happening, you just know will be moments you’ll remember forever.  There are the obvious ones - saying I do, holding your child for the first time, finding out that someone close to you has passed away. 

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This past year has been a rough one for America.  There was the economic slump, the still too-high unemployment rate, the bitter Presidential election, the war in Afghanistan, and of course, the heartbreaking tragedy of Newtown that unfolded just a few days ago. 

I wrote last week about how good it feels to have an end to a year; how important it is to be able to put everything that happened behind and make a fresh start.  I think that we, as a country, are more than ready to say goodbye to 2012. 

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Despite all of the craziness of the holidays, with the gift-buying and the bringing paper goods for class parties and the present-wrapping and the cooking and the hemorrhaging of cash, I actually really do enjoy this time of the year. 

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I will admit that I’m not the most organized person. 

My desk is a mess of papers - scrawled notes for my book, printouts of Amazon purchase confirmations, stray phone numbers that I have yet to put into my contacts folder, old to-do lists with outstanding items on them.  And my kitchen is a mess of piles - bills I need to pay, kids’ artwork I need to photograph, Target receipts for things I need to return. 

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