Last week, I wrote about the amazing, wonderful, unrealistic ideas I had about parenting when I was a young mother. One of them was the idea that having children twenty months apart would result in inseparable playmates who would keep each other entertained. And I guess that was partly...

Sometimes I like to reflect a bit on some of the goals I had as a young mother. I shake my head and smile a little about how I considered these goals realistic and completely attainable. And I feel a great deal of compassion and a little bit of...