Most of childraising is just straight work. Honestly. The diapers are labour, as is the laundry (said with a harrowed, moaning, groan), the fact that everything you tidy has to be tidied three times over because as soon as you put it down, an invisible elastic toddler string snaps it to somewhere else in the house (but never the same place twice), the preparation of food, the getting food into a child who has other plans, getting ready to go out the door (requires four times as long as when it’s just you and your spouse. Also requires two extra bags and three trips back into the house for the blankie, bear, cheerios, juice, story or whatever else it was that you forgot.), the cleaning up of messes (when a child spills juice and then walks through it, you have to mop. Twice.), not being able to jump out of the car and run into a store (you have to deal with child, carseat, arguments over hand-holding, lugging a kid, finding a dryn cart and then keeping the child in it while you shop) and the myriad of other details that those of you without kids do easily, quickly and ONCE and take completely for granted.

There are a few compensations, though. The little sprouts do say cute things:

Stretching her arms wide, “Mommy, I love you THIS MUCH!”

“I give kisses for everybody”

“No Mommy, I not a comundrum. I a kid.” (Her way of saying connundrum)

“Can I have a pollylop?”

“Daddy, will you hold me?”

“Mommy, will you hold me?,” to which she received the saccarine reply of, “It’s naptime, now. Mommy will hold you in her heart.” Her response, “But what about in my bed???”

“Look Mommy! A pile of snow in the window! And another pile in that window! We go out in the snow and make snowballs and a snowman and Christmas will come with Santa and presents and we need a Christmas tree and then we have my birthday.” (it’s in February)

“Mommy, who made this for you?” when shown her new Christmas outfit. When told it came from a store, “How much was it cost?” She’s not three yet. Why is she worried about money?

“Mommy, can you play the choo-choo train with me? I be Percy and you be Thomas and we do the smash up and it’s not an accident.”

Which means I have to go now, as trains are a-callin’ me……