Our kids are not here to comfort us, to entertain us, or to validate us. Those things need to come from ourselves and from other adults.

We've all got to remember to pick our battles carefully, to be prepared to lose small ones, and to hold out for big ones.

Parents, whether or not we believe in a deity, know that to witness a child's mind searching for meaning is a miracle.

Boy meets girl. Boy marries girl. Boy and girl angst over which family they visit at Thanksgiving and which one in December and whether or not it's best to serve turkey or goose for the family feast. When first faced with the reality that the family you married into does things differently, the warmth of tradition can take on a chill.

[Our family is] a wonderfully messy arrangement, in which relationships overlap, underlie, support, and oppose one another. It didn't always come together easily nor does it always stay together easily. It's known very good times and very bad ones. It has held together, often out of shared memories and hopes, sometimes out of the lure of my sisters' cooking, and sometimes out of sheer stubbornness. And like the world itself, our family is renewed by each baby.

Our kids are not here to comfort us, to entertain us, or to validate us. Those things need to come from ourselves and from other adults.

Hard though it may be to accept, remember that guilt is sometimes a friendly internal voice reminding you that you're messing up.