You want the truth? You can’t handle the truth! (Just kidding, I’m sure you can)  I’m taking a break from my usual Wisdom Wednesday column to offer you my True Parenting Confessions…

1. Sometimes, I secretly eat candy behind the kids’ backs. When my four year old asks what I’m eating, I lie and say “A piece of cheese”.
2. I have pretended, on a few occasions, not to smell my baby’s poopy diaper on the weekend so my husband will take diaper duty.
3. Recently, I made a rule that the boys may not come into the kitchen from 6 pm until dinnertime so I can cook in peace. (Well, relative peace. I still end up breaking up 900 squabbles over toys and personal space somehow.)
4. I swore up and down that my kids would never play with my phone in restaurants…they would simply learn how to behave when we went out to eat. Ha.
5. I honestly thought being a mom would be a cakewalk compared to teaching a class of 20 kids all day long. I was very…very…very wrong.
6. I truly believed (and sometimes…gulp…boasted) that I’d never wear maternity pants and would make it through my entire pregnancy in size 4 Seven Jeans with one of those maternity belly bands. The baby only weighs 7 or 8 pounds, right? I’d maybe gain 15 if that. Sixty (yes, that’s 6-0) pounds and 9 months later in August heat…let’s just say it took all the effort I could muster up to wear any pants at all.
7. A couple of times, after a very long day, I have begged my kids to watch Mickey Mouse Clubhouse and give me 10 minutes to myself. Begged. To no avail.
8. If I didn’t have to worry about calories, I’d have no problem with eating an entire New York Cheesecake.
9. When I was in grad school, I got out of class a bit early a couple of times and had to force myself to go home to the kids. I really wanted to just sit in the student center and drink coffee alone and pretend to be in class still…but guilt won, and I went right home.
10. I drink SO MUCH COFFEE. Like, crazy amounts. I can’t even put a number on it, but it’s bad.
11. I have purchased “shape wear” to wear under fancy clothes because I’m still not back in the shape I’d like to be. This is 100% because I would rather bear the shame of Spanx and spend my evening drinking wine instead of running on the elliptical.
12. Every time I put on my tankini instead of a bikini I hate myself a little more.
13. I want a minivan so badly. I used to HATE everything they stood for. Now I long for one.
14. When I was pregnant with my first, I told my husband that only bad parents have kids who throw public tantrums. Surely ours would never do this. He laughed heartily and said “Wanna bet on that?”. I bet him $100 that our child would never throw a public tantrum. By now, I think I probably owe him a Ferrari.

    

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