3.0

3 stars for the book itself, but 5 stars--10 stars--a million gazillion stars for the attitude and idea behind it. I knew I couldn't be the only one who is sick to death of reading blogs and facebook updates from 'perfect' moms whose lives appear to be nothing but sunshine and cupcakes, whose children are apparently perfect angels, who find unceasing and limitless joy and satisfaction in the act of mothering (and I can't be the only one who hates those mothers for it, either). Because although I love my son immensely and am so glad to be his mother, sometimes I want to run away from this house and never come back. Sometimes I wonder what possessed me to think I could handle being a mother in the first place. Sometimes I even think I might understand/sympathize with the mothers on the news who do awful things like drown their children in the bathtub (picture Lucille Bluth off her postpartum meds: "Good for her!").

So although the book itself isn't necessarily the most amazing thing you'll ever read, I so so SO appreciated someone being honest and admitting that this is HARD, that it isn't all roses and rainbows, that some days you really despise those little buttheads, and that admitting all of that doesn't make you a bad mom. It makes you a normal mom, and hopefully more of us will be okay with admitting it to each other. At the end of the day, you still love and treasure those babies, but there isn't anything wrong with acknowledging that it is damn hard.

(Also, I would have read this book for the confessions alone--little snippets contributed by anonymous blog readers confessing their high or, more often, low points as mothers. Hilarious.)