Little kids, little problems. Big kids ... well, you do the math.

I would love to just hop onto the ol' blog in the evening and vent about my day. Yep, my day that was full of a newborn and an 18 month old, full of poopy diapers and being peed on (what? they're boys, after all) and countless hours spent reading Goodnight Moon (who, by the way, decided that was such a gem? I don't like that book. So there.)

I would love to wax poetic about how, while my oldest was in school and my youngest in preschool my baby decided to take the Fisher Price telephone with the googly eyes and dump it into the toilet.

Or I could share with you the tales of being terribly ill, with 2 or 3 also ill children, and a husband who just had to go to work. From 7 am to 5:30 pm. In a basement lab with no cell phone reception and no one responsible for the phones down there, so they ring incessantly and everyone ignores them, and even if by some miracle the phone DOES get answered either they don't know who your husband is or have not seen him all day and so they surmise he must be in another lab, to which they give you yet another number for a phone that will go unanswered and ... well, that isn't funny at all. But you get the idea.

I would love to post a Mommy Blog entry. God, I HATE that term. My blog never really fit into any category other than "navel gazing" and that is the way I like it. I don't write to drive traffic, I don't obsess over my viewing stats ... I just write for ME. But today's blog entry (because all together the entries make up the blog, but a single post is an entry, not a blog.) is not what I want to be writing.

My kids are past the Mommy Blog stage. They are not little and cute anymore. The things they do are not (and have not been, for some time) appropriate for a blog, nor are they my stories to tell. So I don't post much about them. It's my choice; what other parents or Mommy Bloggers do is their business. I pass no judgment.

But. The stuff they do now? Is SO MUCH BIGGER than potty training struggles, or sticking tiny beads up their noses, or running out into the street at a (fortunately quiet and low-traffic) lake resort. (Yes, all of those things happened.)

The struggle I am engaged in now is about autonomy. It's about self-identity. It's about figuring out what kind of a person you want to be. It's about personal responsibility, self-motivation, and finding one's place in the world.

It is BIG STUFF. And I can't go into detail, or spill my guts because this? It's really about my kid, who is awesome and creative and intelligent and funny and a good friend and a decent human being, and who is just going through the messy process of growing up.

This place, where I have ironed out my own issues with regard to growing up and figuring out who I am, is not the place for me to vent about these particular issues. They are universal, there is no doubt. But this is my family we are talking about, and I don't want my kids' friends in college to Google them and find their entire catalog of adolescent angst laid bare for the world.

The issues, when they're little? They seem so big. No. They ARE big. They are monumental when you are in them. The teething/potty training/temper tantrum stage? It sucks. It's hard. I know, I have been there. But. All I'm saying is, the problems get bigger as the kids do. Every stage has its struggles, and its rewards. Age 2? Tantrums and sticky, drooly kisses. Age 9? Friend drama and a kid who can crack a mean knock-knock joke.

So, as cliche and trite as it is, live in the now. Because they grow up, man. And ain't nothin' any easier when they're big.