Whenever I feel mom-guilt, or I feel pressure to be a better mom - to cook salmon on a bed of quinoa for my kids - I just think to myself, 'I... have... suffered... enough.' And then I feel fine about feeding my toddler a bag of chips for dinner.
My mother has told so many times the unbelievable story of how, as a toddler, I would demand raw onions and eat them like apples, I think that, at this juncture, it is a story that just has to be believed.
I felt different at 29 because 29, to me, is 30. There are times when I still feel like an actual toddler in a grown-up - well, semi-grown-up - body.
This thinking that you can have every single thing you want in life is not the thinking of a feminist. It's the thinking of a toddler.
In 1979, when I was toddler, the Russians invaded Afghanistan, and my whole family fled to Vienna, Virginia. Far from home, my parents were determined to raise my two sisters and me according to Afghan traditions.
I was just a toddler when my dad died in a car crash. With my mum, Eunice, being a young widow with a large family, she really struggled money-wise.
I remember growing up always loving the guitar. I used to love to watch the people play on the Country Western shows on TV. My folks told me that when I was just a toddler, I used to pretend I was playing a guitar on a toothpick.
Spend enough time wrangling a toddler, and you get good at being kind but firm. Like your child, you must be doggedly single-minded when it matters.
Technology is a tool that has allowed us to swipe around like an angry toddler.
Worst part of being a writer: having to tell my toddler that I can't play with her because I'm working. Keep in mind that working consists of me at home with a laptop on my lap sitting on the couch. It doesn't look like working. I don't have a hammer or anything.
