After school ice cream break

Toddler Masan at The Chocolate Room after her first movie

Sweet, curious baby Evie

Sweet Mia at Carroll Park last spring

I LOVE my children. Yes, this is the sort of thing people say before they say something scathing about them. (And yeah, it’s veering somewhat in that direction, but hang tight because it’s not bad, promise). I do love my kids more than anything. It took 9 long years to have 3 kids through pretty much every means available. It took 9 years of prayer; loads of painful, annoying, marriage-testing medical intervention; gut- and heart-wrenching, tiptoe through the mine-fields, emotional free-fall open adoption; and the good old fashioned, pain in the ass of 9 (which is really more like 10) months of the morning sickness, bloating, and depression otherwise known as pregnancy.

So they are hard won, these kids. And they are my life and world. Being a mom was the only thing that I really knew that I wanted in this life. I was lonely before they came along—something big was missing. Once Masan got here I could breathe again. However, and here comes the scathing part—the chores necessary with raising small children SUCK! No one told me I was going to be Cinderella without the mice to help me or talk to, stuck in my farthest-thing-from-a-castle apartment in Brooklyn, washing dishes, making beds, folding laundry, dealing with the trash and recycling (which we can only take out to the curb twice a week and takes up valuable square footage in my already teeny kitchen), cleaning up spills and crumbs, making meals, packing lunches, picking up and refolding all the clothes that the youngest has emptied out of all the drawers in her room, etc. OVER AND OVER AND OVER AGAIN for seemingly all eternity. This must be a circle of hell.

Everyone knows the deal and gets the picture—I don’t need to go on and on. I’m not talking about the school field trips to MOMA or the birthday party planning or the playdates—those things are really fun, well….except when the playdate fun ravages your apartment just in time for dinner prep, homework, bath time, and the whole night-time routine. The other kids head home and you are left with your 3 kids inevitably on a sugar-high because you served fresh-baked cookies (from a mix, of course) because you love your kids’  friends and so that you could seemingly be the really great hostess and cool mom—“oh, it’s totally fine that your kid peed all over the floor in the bathroom and my 18 month old walked through it and tracked it all over the carpet,” having to clean up the toys strewn all over, the crumbs mashed into the rug in every room, the sticky juice spilled on the floor, all while trying to get homework done, shove something healthy into your kids for dinner, bathe them, read to them, tuck them in, say prayers when the only thing that you want to do is have a glass of wine, sit on the couch and not move one muscle while binge watching ‘House of Cards’ on Netflix for the next 3 hours before you sleep walk over to the bed and collapse, ready to be up at 6 am when your kids jump on you and start arguing over who can lay closest to you (which is so sweet, but really annoying at such an early hour). And sometimes your husband comes home in the evening just in time to help you handle this nighttime chaos after his chaotic day, but most of the time, you are on your own to help keep this ship afloat. (Sorry, the venting dam has opened and I just can’t stop the flow!) And pretty much every morning the kids are up at 6 am, the husband has already left for work, and you have to get the kids out the door without any help while the baby hits you over and over in the face, obsessed about eating the Trident gum tucked away in your night side table, and homes in on it like her life depends on eating it, and throws herself on the floor when she is denied. Somehow you strap her to your chest, get the other 2 out the door, in appropriate uniforms and wearing backpacks, with even a French braid done for one of them, and by 9 am you are ready to collapse, but you really should take a shower and brush your hair. Or even better, have a moment to write a blog post about it because when you tell your husband all of this stuff, he tells you that you complain too much.

Okay, where was I? My point was that the fun things about parenthood are amazing, but I am slowly turning into a middle-aged, no time to work-out or take care of me, version of Cinderella. So basically, Cinderella with grey hair peeking out of her handkerchief and no babysitter for the ball.

Dan keeps telling me that in 6 more weeks everything will turn into roses and sunshine because we will be in India. He seems to think that because we are going to hire some help that much of what is dragging me down will be done for me. It all sounds too good to be true. Is hiring someone to help me battle the constant air pollution that invades all homes in India going to help me escape my prison of never-ending housework? I am doubtful. I want to be able to see India, to explore with my kids, to make new friends, to experience all that this scary, interesting, foreign-to-me country has to offer. My biggest fear is that I will be trapped inside my “villa” with more bedrooms and bathrooms, but doing the mundane things that I do everyday in Brooklyn.