Allison Cooper

My fingers are currently grazing the keyboard as my arms reach around my four week old, who happens to be strapped to my chest in our BabyBjorn – which has been my saving grace these days. She’s sleeping soundly, but just moments ago she was wailing (I’m speculating that I have a colicky baby on my hands) and this is the only way that I can get my work done. No shower yet today (it’s 1 pm, gross), pretty much all I’ve eaten is a quick bowl of oatmeal (and of course coffee) and have been up for the day since 5am (plus countless feeding during the night). But I’m chugging forward. Yup, being a mom of a newborn makes me feel superhuman.

Dear Oldest Son, Life these days is all about dividing and conquering. I feel more and more like I’m dividing and conquering so many things.

I can't just embrace the chaos. I wish I could follow the advice: “Stop stressing, Allison, you work full time, stop comparing yourself to mothers who don’t." But I can’t help but to play that comparing game and label myself as the inadequate mom.

Why the hell didn’t anyone remind me how hard the toddler years are? I’m taking all the mental notes on how to survive the toddler years.

We do our best as parents, but there is no plan or prediction that can determine how your relationship with your children will be, grow, and change throughout the course of our lives. That is one of the most unpredictable things in parenthood.

Faux freckles. Come on. You know that you have always wanted to strategically place a little freckle and mimic what Cindy Crawford has naturally.

[CN: mention of suicide] It’s not all real. We don’t live curated lives that are built around purposeful omissions of reality...

“I taught my 8 year old daughter how to use our remote to turn on Netflix Kids (only my 11-year-old knows how to use it), and left out cereal bars and bananas for breakfast.” Nancy J. Horn, New York mom of three.

10. 15 minutes alone in the grocery store has become your equivalent to a therapy session.

Parenthood is so chaotic that we find ourselves spewing words sometimes that we probably never, ever pictured ourselves saying. Then parenthood happened.